Gretchen Vogel
One of Donald Trump’s first moves after he’s sworn in as the 47th U.S. president on 20 January, his transition team has reportedly said, will be to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). Trump started the process to quit WHO in July 2020, during his first presidential term. He said the organization was too close to China and claimed, contrary to the evidence, that WHO had helped cover up initial spread of COVID-19. Because the withdrawal process takes a year, President Joe Biden was able to reverse the decision when he took office in January 2021.
Now, Trump has a real chance to part ways with the United Nations’s health agency, although Congress could try to block the move, and there would likely be intense diplomatic efforts to keep the U.S. on board. An exit would take effect in January 2026 at the earliest. It would put the U.S. in the company of Liechtenstein as the only U.N. member countries not in WHO.
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WHO declined to comment directly. “From our side we are ready to work together. The relationship between the WHO and the United States has been a good model of partnership for many years and we believe that will be the case,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a December 2024 press conference. “I believe that U.S. leaders understand that the U.S. cannot be safe unless the rest of the world is safe.”
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