President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the globalist World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on the first day of his second term. The Geneva-based U.N. subsidiary announced Saturday as a consequence it is now beginning a radical restructure and refinancing overhaul.
Trump’s administration made its departure after accusing the agency of mishandling the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and other international health crises, as Breitbart News reported.
As Trump signed the executive order, he spoke about how under his first term, the U.S. “paid $500 million” to the W.H.O., adding China was paying less money to the W.H.O. Trump said he felt it “seemed a little unfair.”
“That’s a big one,” Trump said. “So, we paid $500 million to [the] World Health Organization when I was here, and I terminated it. China, with 1.4 billion people, we have 350 … nobody knows what we have because so many people came in illegally. But, let’s say we have 325, they have 1.4 billion, they were paying $39 million, we were paying $500 million.
“Seemed a little unfair to me, so that wasn’t the reason, but I dropped out.”
The U.S. is by far the U.N. health agency’s biggest financial backer, contributing a hefty 18 percent of its overall funding in support of its bureaucratic tentacles.
“The United States’ announcement, combined with recent reductions in official development assistance by some countries to fund increased defence spending, has made our situation much more acute”, stated a W.H.O. memo as reported by Reuters, which was dated March 28 and signed by W.H.O.’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The report details the memo noted:
The U.S. withdrawal has exacerbated a funding crisis due to member states reducing their development spending.
Faced with an income gap of nearly $600 million this year, the WHO has proposed to slash its budget for 2026-27 by 21% from US$5.3 billion to US$4.2 billion.
In February, the W.H.O.’s executive board had initially reduced the proposed budget for 2026-27 from US$5.3 billion to US$4.9 billion, according to the note.
“Despite our best efforts, we are now at the point where we have no choice but to reduce the scale of our work and workforce,” the memo said, according to Reuters.
The W.H.O. will reduce jobs at senior leadership level at its headquarters in Switzerland though all levels and regions will be affected, the memo added.
It will decide on how to prioritize its work and resources by the end of April.
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