Even as numbers of positive COVID-19 cases continued to climb in the U.S. and around the world in early July, the U.S. formally ended its relationship with the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO). The Trump administration first announced the controversial withdrawal in late May and cut off funding to the group; weeks later, the White House submitted an official departure notice. When the move takes effect — no sooner than July 2021 — the health organization will lose funding from one of its biggest contributors.
President Donald Trump began voicing his discontent with the WHO early in the spring of 2020, saying the agency was mishandling the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He specifically voiced disappointment that the WHO was not doing enough to hold China accountable for the global proliferation of the coronavirus by not examining whether China was misrepresenting its death count.
“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said in a May speech. “Countless lives have been taken, and profound economic hardship has been inflicted all around the globe.”
A number of Republicans backed the Trump administration’s move and expressed disapproval of the WHO’s response to the pandemic. In a tweet following the announcement, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) called it “the right decision” and added that “until the WHO undergoes some serious reforms, it doesn’t deserve our money or our membership.”
In June, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released an interim report looking into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and called out China and the WHO for negligent actions that led to a higher death count.
“After months of investigating, it’s become crystal clear the Chinese Communist Party’s [CCP] cover-up of the coronavirus, especially in the early days of the outbreak, played a significant role in turning what could have been a local epidemic into a global pandemic,” McCaul said in a statement. “And, unfortunately, the World Health Organization under the leadership of Director General Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus] only exacerbated the problem by repeatedly ignoring warnings about the severity of the virus, including from their own health experts, while at the same time parroting the CCP’s propaganda without independently confirming their claims. This was a failure of monumental proportions and it is imperative that we uncover the truth so we can set up future safeguards to prevent this from happening yet again.”
Meanwhile, public health experts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said the move would put the health of people around the world at risk. Some went so far as to accuse the administration of using the departure to deflect from its own handling of the pandemic in the U.S. At the time of the withdrawal announcement, COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. had surpassed 100,000. Former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thomas Frieden tweeted that “leaving WHO does not serve the interests of people in the U.S. or anywhere in the world.”
“We need WHO, we need it to be stronger, and it can be stronger with sustained U.S. presence and support,” he added. “WHO is essential to responding to COVID-19 and to broader global health protection.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted that the withdrawal was “senseless,” adding that the “President is crippling the international effort to defeat the virus.”
On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, also spoke out against the withdrawal, arguing that there should be an investigation into the WHO but only after the pandemic is over. “Withdrawing U.S. membership could, among other things, interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of vaccines, which citizens of the United States as well as others in the world need,” he said in a statement. “And withdrawing could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States.”
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced via Twitter that the U.S. would rejoin the WHO on his first day as president, adding that “Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health.” In July, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) introduced a resolution condemning Trump’s decision, saying it “endangers America’s public health.”
At this time, it is unknown whether the U.S. will be able to withdraw from the WHO without congressional approval.
For more background, see the December 2014 issue of Congressional Digest on “Ebola Epidemic.”
