Trump withdraws the US from the World Health Organization

President Trump quickly moved on Monday to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization. Health experts say the move will undermine the country's standing as a global health leader and make it harder to fight the next pandemic.

In an executive order issued about eight hours after taking his oath of office, Mr. Trump cited a number of reasons for the withdrawal, including those of the WHO “Mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic” and the “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.” He said the agency was demanding “unjustifiably high payments” from the United States and complained that China was paying less.

The move was not unexpected. Mr Trump has railed against the WHO since 2020, when he attacked the agency over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and threatened to withhold funding from the United States. In July 2020, Mr. Trump took formal steps to withdraw from the agency.

But after he lost the 2020 election, the threat did not come true. On his first day in office, January 20, 2021, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. blocked it from taking effect.

Withdrawing from the WHO would mean, among other things, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not have access to the global data the agency provides. When China characterized the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus in 2020, it passed the information to the WHO, which shared it with other nations.

More recently, the WHO has come under the radar of conservatives for its work on a “pandemic treaty” to strengthen pandemic preparedness and set legally binding guidelines for member countries to monitor pathogens, quickly share outbreak data, and build local production and supply chains under for vaccines and treatments, among others.

Talks about the contract failed last year. In the United States, some Republican lawmakers viewed the agreement as a threat to American sovereignty.

Lawrence O. Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University who helped negotiate the treaty, said that a United States withdrawal from the WHO would be “a serious wound” to public health, but an “even deeper one “It would be a wound to the national interests and national security of the United States.”

The World Health Organization was founded in 1948 with the help of the United States and is a United Nations agency. Their mission, according to their website, is to “address the greatest health challenges of our time and measurably improve the well-being of the world’s people.”

This includes providing assistance in war zones such as Gaza and tracking emerging epidemics such as Zika, Ebola and Covid-19. The WHO's annual budget is approximately $6.8 billion; The United States has typically contributed an outsized share.

According to Mr. Gostin, it will take time for the United States to withdraw. A joint resolution passed by Congress when the agency was created addressed possible withdrawal and requires the United States to give one year's notice and meet its financial obligations to the organization for the current fiscal year.