The U.S. will exit the globalist World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on day one of President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration taking power, a report Sunday predicts.
The U.S. is the W.H.O.’s largest single donor. It provides the home to over 8,000 career bureaucrats with about 16 percent of its budget, which in 2024 stood at U.S.$6.83 billion.
It has previously been criticised by conservative voices for its extraordinary drain on U.S. taxpayer funds while Trump has called it a slave to China’s own global ambitions.
According to the Financial Times, members of Trump’s team told the experts of their intention to announce a withdrawal from the Geneva-based health body on January 20 — inauguration day.
The departure would remove the W.H.O.’s biggest source of funds in one fell swoop. The FT report notes the withdrawal will complete a process Trump started last time he was in office:
In 2020, Trump initiated the process to leave the WHO as Covid-19 spread, accusing the agency of being under China’s control. But the process was never finished and his successor Joe Biden restarted relations with the agency on his first day of office in 2021.
Experts have been told that some in Trump’s team want to move much faster this time around after initiating the process immediately.
Ashish Jha, Biden’s former White House coronavirus response co-ordinator and dean of Brown University’s school of public health, told the outlet the transition team wanted Trump to withdraw on the first day because of the “symbolism” of reversing Biden’s own inauguration-day move.
“There are lots of people who are going to be part of the inner circle of the administration who do not trust the W.H.O. and want to symbolically show on day one that they are out,” he said.
The Trump transition team did not comment directly on the potential withdrawal. One person familiar with the plans told the FT: “The same W.H.O. that we left in the first administration? It seems like we wouldn’t much care what they have to say.”
Trump previously criticized the W.H.O. for siding with China despite heavy criticism for their lack of transparency about the coronavirus and its spread and origins, as Breitbart News reported.
“They seem to be very China-centric,” he said in April, 2020. “That’s a nice way of saying it, but they seem to be very China-centric, and they seem to err always on the side of China.”
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