Trump Administration Withdraws U.S. from WHO

Trump Administration Withdraws U.S. from WHO

President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United Stated from the United Nations-led World Health Organisation (WHO). The notification terminating U.S. involvement in the UN agency went out on Monday.

The Trump administration had halted funding for the UN health body in April on the grounds of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”

The White House decision comes after a series of allegations accusing WHO of hiding China’s guilt in the coronavirus outbreak. The agency has faced accusations of acting as Beijing’s tool in its global misinformation campaign surrounding the Wuhan pandemic.

“China has total control over the World Health Organization despite only paying $40 million per year compared to what the United States has been paying which is approximately $450 million a year,” President Trump said in May.

Associated Press reported the U.S. government’s decision:

The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, although the pullout won’t take effect until next year, meaning it could be rescinded under a new administration or if circumstances change. (…)

The withdrawal notification makes good on President Donald Trump’s vow in late May to terminate U.S. participation in the WHO, which he has harshly criticized for its response to the coronavirus pandemic and accused of bowing to Chinese influence.

The move was immediately assailed by health officials and critics of the administration, including numerous Democrats who said it would cost the U.S. influence in the global arena. (…)

The withdrawal notice was sent to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday and will take effect in a year, on July 6, 2021, the State Department and the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The State Department said the U.S. would continue to seek reform of the WHO, but referred to Trump’s June 15 response when asked if the administration might change its mind. “I’m not reconsidering, unless they get their act together, and I’m not sure they can at this point,” Trump said.

On May 19, President Trump wrote a letter to the WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, blasting him and his organization for serving China’s interests.

“I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests,” he wrote in that letter dated May 19.

The mainstream media, which has been critical of the U.S. president at every step since the outbreak began, has been silent on Terdos’s controversial past or his questionable links to Communist China. He is the first director-general of the UN health agency with no formal medical education.

Tedros began his political career with Ethiopia’s genocidal Derg Marxist regime in the mid-1980s and was hand-picked by Beijing in 2017 to head the WHO.

“Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for the Ethiopian, using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries.’ Britsh newspaper The Times reported in October 2017.

China has been instrumental in propping up Tedros for several years.

“UN records also show that Chinese contributions to both Ethiopia’s aid budget and the WHO have substantially increased during times when he was in top leadership positions,” UK’s Daily Mail revealed in April.

With coronavirus deaths crossing half a million, the world needs to make Tedros-run WHO accountable.

The agency “pandered to the Chinese by-line and gave the world some deadly advice,” Australia’s Spectator magazine noted in April. “We need to pull funding from WHO until further notice as we are funding a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party,” the weekly added.

With Washington moving to pull out, WHO will lose its biggest donor. The agency received close to $3.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer money since 2010, the congressional data shows.

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