President Trump fulfilled his campaign pledge Monday to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization.
The big picture: The U.S. is the WHO’s top donor, contributing about $130 million per year to help cover its global health preparedness and response, along with efforts to address HIV, tuberculosis, and childhood vaccination, per Devex.
- Trump started the process to withdraw from WHO during his first term, claiming the agency failed badly responding to COVID-19 and had not demonstrated its independence from China.
- However, then-President Biden reversed it on his first day in office.
Driving the news: Monday’s executive order states that the U.S. issued a notice about its withdrawal in 2020 “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic … 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.”
- Additionally, “the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments,” it continues, noting China pays less despite having a larger population. More here