President Donald Trump has announced he is withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.
Trump has long been critical of the United Nations health agency, and his administration formally began withdrawing from the WHO in July 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread. But four years ago, then-President Joe Biden halted the US exit from the body.
On Monday, January 20, Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the US that are disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.
“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said at the signing.
The move means the US will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months and stop all financial contributions to its work. The United States is by far the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18 percent of its overall funding.
The text of Monday’s executive order cites the “organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states,” as reasons for the US withdrawal.
“That’s a big one,” Trump told an aide as he began to sign the executive order, pointing to his 2020 decision and his belief that the US was paying too much money to the organization compared to other countries. In 2020, Trump also consistently accused the organization of aiding China in allegedly covering up the origins of COVID-19 and allowing its spread.
Dr Ashish Jha, who served as White House COVID-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, called Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO in his second term a “strategic error.”
“WHO is a pretty essential organization — and with America’s withdrawal, it creates a political vacuum that only one country can fill — and that is China,” Jha said in an interview with CNN on Monday.
He predicted that China would step up for the organisation in the absence of US funding and leadership, which could, in turn, “give China more political influence around the world.”
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