President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, as part of a spate of directives made during his first night in the Oval Office.
It was the second time Trump has made such an order. His first attempt at withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO, in 2020, was rescinded by Joe Biden when he took office in 2021.
Trump has sparred with the WHO since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he accused the organization of not being transparent when it came to its investigation into the origins of the pandemic in China. He also disagreed with the agency over the use of travel restrictions to control the spread of the virus. Trump temporarily suspended funding to the WHO as a result of these concerns.
His current gripe with the WHO also appears to be related to the amount of funding the U.S. provides the organization compared to other member nations. When signing the executive order, he told reporters, “World Health rips us off. Everybody rips off the United States.”
In the executive order, Trump wrote that “the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”
The WHO said on Tuesday that it “regrets” Trump’s move.
“We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the USA and WHO, for the benefit of the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe,” the organization said in a statement.
The U.S. has long been one of the biggest funders of the WHO, with contributions ranging from $163 to $816 million over the past decade.
The WHO was founded in 1948 and is a special agency of the United Nations with a mandate to “act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work” for the UN. It was instrumental in a number of historic global health achievements, including the eradication of smallpox. More recently it has provided support and guidance to countries affected by outbreaks of diseases like Ebola, Zika, mpox and COVID-19.
While a resolution adopted by Congress technically requires the U.S. to give a year’s notice before leaving the WHO, and to continue its financial support of the organization through the fiscal year, it’s unclear if that would take place. The new executive order revokes Biden’s retraction of Trump’s 2020 order, making the new timeline uncertain.
The U.S.’s withdrawal from the WHO will likely please health secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who wrote on X in early 2024, “The WHO has been taken over by global elites and foreign powers that don’t share America’s best interests and values.”
In another post, Kennedy wrote, “The WHO still wants experimental vaccines rolled out, still wants liability shields, still wants to impose censorship, and still plans to use “One Health” to control humans, plants, animals, and ecosystems, all in the name of health.”
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.