President Donald Trump on Monday signed scores of executive orders, including one to withdraw from the World Health Organization.
WHO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, serves as the United Nation’s health agency and is responsible global public health.
In his order, Trump said he notified the UN about the proposed withdrawal in 2020 “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
“In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments,” according to the proclamation. “China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300% of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90% less to the WHO.”
Trump said that the U.S. had long been forced to overpay for WHO during a Monday evening news conference.
“We were paying $500 million. It seemed a little unfair to me,” he said. “China pays $39 million and we pay $500 million and China’s a bigger country.”
The U.S. has been a part of WHO since 1948, the year the organization was founded. The U.S. withdrawal makes it the only major world power not a member of the 194-country health organization.
Trump previously called WHO “a puppet of China.”
It will take a year for Trump’s WHO departure to become official.
