No one in this world deserves to get sick. It is a condition that ranges from a day-long tedium to the unfortunate conclusion of one’s life. From both extremes and everything in between, illness is a state of being humanity could live without, or at least with a reduced frequency.

It is here where the leading scientists and the finest health coordinators spring into action, doing the daily work to reduce the spread of disease through identification, treatment, and containment. The United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) is the primary institution facilitating this practice. The WHO has the skills, connections, and resources to coordinate an international disease prevention and control network, working year-round to save lives.

It is this same institution that the Trump administration has signed an Executive Order to withdraw the United States from. Under the pretension of escaping a malign super-national force that has been coercing money from the United States while acting in favor of autocratic governments, namely China, Trump seeks to remove the United States and its ample funding from the WHO.

The Order claims that  The US is withdrawing its membership “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic… and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states”, and that, “the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.” The Executive Order then explains that the US will recall all government personnel, halt any future transfer of government funds/resources, and find new domestic and international partners that can replace the WHO’s functions.

The WHO receives contributions from all its member states, mainly through voluntary and assessed contributions. The former is self-explanatory, and the latter is the base amount countries need to contribute to retain membership, based on the member state’s GDP. The assessment of a country’s GDP, and its ability to pay, are conducted every two years, and the WHO’s tracking of contributions is on a two-year basis. In 2022 and 2023, the United States contributed around $1.02B in voluntary contributions and $218.5M in assessed contributions. In the same period, China only contributed around $41.1M and $114.9M in voluntary and accessed contributions.

Analysis

Why does Trump want to leave the WHO? It is certainly not for funding reasons, as the U.S.’s contributions to the WHO are almost entirely voluntary, and yearly assessed contributions (≈$109.3M) make up about 0.0017% of annual government expenditures ($6.272T in 2023). It is also not because of some form of malign influence. The WHO is entirely independent and employs experts from across the world.

 A major operation to assert control over an independent UN institution would be difficult and politically dangerous for China if it came to light. It is also not because of the WHO’s supposed mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, as if it could force member states to adopt policy, somehow singlehandedly ending the concept of sovereignty. None of these reasons are conceivably more than red herrings to justify action.

The real reason is simple, Trump does not like to be told he is wrong. The vendetta against the WHO is based on the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump accused the WHO of not acting quickly enough to prevent the spread of the virus, even though it had been sounding the alarm since January 2020. When Trump tried to block travel and imports from China, the WHO informed him that such a policy was ineffective at preventing the spread of the virus and would make it difficult to ensure the movement of vital resources. Trump responded with fury and began claiming that the WHO was “China-centric”. The WHO then became a target of the administration to shift the blame for its late reaction and downplay of the pandemic; they continually claimed that it was the WHO that did not react fast enough and that its collusion with China put the United States at risk.

This course of events makes one question the entire social science field when billions of humans’ health and lives are put at risk from one man’s grade-school reaction of “it wasn’t me.”

By pulling  the United States out of the WHO, and cutting off its communication with the CDC, Trump has worsened the world’s ability to prevent global health crises from emerging. As its largest contributor vanishes, the WHO will be left with about $2.75B per year (which is approximately ¼ of the New York City Police Department’s annual budget), severely limiting the resources it needs to combat disease and prevent pandemics across the entire world.

In terms of domestic disease control, the Executive Order claims that the United States will find other partners to take up the functions of the WHO, but this misses the point. The WHO does not exist in a vacuum, and private partners that work closely and coordinate with every national and local government health agency are virtually nonexistent. In this case, the United States can either begin ignoring health warnings from other countries, set up bilateral agreements with nations to coordinate on health or hire hundreds of private contracting companies to build a new infrastructure of multilateral health cooperation. Unless the US rejoins the WHO or builds that new network, Americans are far more at risk of national health crises or another global pandemic.

Furthermore, Trump’s actions are a bellwether for the fall of the Liberal World Order (LWO), the system of multilateral agreements, international organizations, and coalitions that were set up by the United States after the Second World War (e.g. UN, WTO, NATO). While the system has never been perfect and certainly needs vast revision and contemporizing, it has ensured peace between great and major powers for eighty years. As the main political, economic, and military guarantor of the LWO, and  the United States, creeps back to a state of isolationism, the LWO is certain to collapse. With this, we can expect struggles to create bilateral trade agreements, wars across the world to become more frequent, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and international upheaval that is beyond calculation.

While this administration seems resolute in its isolationism, there may be a chance to save what is left. If in two years not everything that we have valued since World War II has vanished, a new Congress, elected by people distraught at the short-sighted actions of the Executive, can begin the good work of challenging and reversing these policies. For these next two years, we must work to maintain our values, hold a critical eye on all incoming policies, and ensure that the next election is one that right-wing populists will not soon forget.

Engagement Resources

• KFF.org, a non-partisan research center focused on health policy
• Article that demystifies the term “Liberal World Order” in a modern political context
• Donate and learn more about the WHO’s vital work