Trump declares U.S. will withdraw from the World Health Organization

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On the first day of his second presidential term, President Donald Trump announced his intention to terminate U.S. membership in the World Health Organization. / AFP via Getty Images

President Trump is making good on his pre-election pledge to withdraw from the World Health Organization. In one of many orders issued after his inauguration, he announced the start of the process for terminating U.S. membership in the U.N. agency that oversees global health issues.

Trump's frustration with WHO goes back to the height of the COVID era. He's repeatedly criticized the organization for being too slow to respond to the pandemic and being "owned and controlled by China."

"World Health ripped us off," Trump said during an extended, relaxed discussion with reporters as he signed executive actions.

It will take a year for Trump's pledge to become official. That's the time frame the U.S. set for any future withdrawal when it joined the global health body in 1948. In Trump's first term, he halted funding to WHO and initiated the process of withdrawing. But before the one-year mark had been reached, Biden took office and reversed course immediately.

The consequences of Monday's announcement for WHO are significant. They'd lose arguably their most important member — and their biggest donor by far. The U.S. gave $1.284 billion to WHO during 2022 and 2023 – hundreds of millions of dollars more than Germany, the second-place donor.

Critics of Trump's call believe that the U.S. will also face consequences. WHO monitors global health threats, evaluates new vaccines and medications, coordinates the response to emerging health crises as well as ongoing issues and provides expert support to countries, particularly when they face a health emergency – among other things. The U.S. would lose easy access to critical data on outbreaks and a seat at the table when health standards are set and disease responses are decided.

"This is the most cataclysmic decision," says Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University and director of WHO's Center on Global Health Law. "[This is] a grave wound to American national interests and our national security. This will really leave our agencies – like the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and NIH [National Institutes of Health] flying blind."

Elisha Dunn-Georgiou — president and CEO of the Global Health Council, a nonpartisan group that advocates for global health – said withdrawing is "really bad for the U.S. [in terms of] access to data, to surveillance, to being at the table negotiating and holding other countries accountable when there is an epidemic or pandemic."

Speaking to NPR last week about the prospect of withdrawal, she said: "Other countries with a lot of power — China, Russia — other powers that want to shape the WHO, would take [this] opportunity to do so."

Brett Schaefer — a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation — said there are other ways the Trump Administration can lead in the global health arena after leaving WHO.

"There's hardly a lack of precedent for maybe addressing pandemic issues outside of the WHO," he said, speaking to NPR before the announcement was made. "There's a reason why UNAIDS exists, and there's a reason why GAVI [The Vaccine Alliance] exists, and there's a reason why the Global Fund exists — and that's because the WHO has, in the past, not been seen as either the most effective or the most responsive vehicle for addressing various international health concerns."