Washington.- U.S. officially left the World Health Organization (WHO) this Thursday, as reported by the Department of Health, a decision stemming from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in 2025 and which raises concerns due to its implications for global health or the millions in dues that Washington owes the organization.
On the day of his return to power, January 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order based on which he issued a formal notice to withdraw from the United Nations agency specializing in health.
Trump, who already initiated the process in his first term (2017-2021) to remove the country from the organization for what he considered a mismanagement of the covid-19 pandemic, insisted on that point again in the executive order he signed.
In the text, he also criticized the WHO’s role in “other global health crises,” its inability to adopt reforms and “its lack of independence from the undue political influence” of other member states, a direct reference to China’s weight.
The argument put forward by the Trump administration continues to be that countries with larger populations than the U.S. (as is the case with China) do not pay the same volume of dues.
No payment of fees
An American official from the Department of Health and Human Services emphasized to the media today that his country has come to pay 25% of the WHO’s budget, that the agency has never had an American director general, or that the agency itself has tried to prevent other countries from paying more fees due to the heavy burden Washington bore.
«There are numerous examples, both recent and historical, of the WHO’s shortcomings, but the main point is that we paid them, we trusted them and they failed us, and they took no responsibility for their failure,» added the official.
“We will continue working with countries and Ministries of Health, as we have done for decades, and we will continue to develop those relationships and use them in a way that is mutually beneficial and respects the sovereignty of both our country and other countries,” he affirmed, addressing the doubts raised by the US withdrawal in terms of global health cooperation, especially in the face of new pandemics.
When the WHO was founded in 1948, the U.S. joined the organization through a joint resolution of Congress which stipulated that the North American country reserved, unlike the other member countries, the right to withdraw from the agency.
Another U.S. official assured today in relation to the millionaire quotas that Washington has to pay that the terms of said 1948 resolution do not include anything regarding that, as a condition to leave the WHO, “any payment must be made before the withdrawal takes effect”.
The Trump administration has insisted on several occasions that it does not intend to pay its corresponding fees for the 2024-2025 period, which are estimated to amount to between 260 and 280 million dollars.
