London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

Donald Trump’s threat to cut WHO funds ‘puts American interests at risk’

Donald Trump’s threat to cut WHO funds ‘puts American interests at risk’

An outbreak anywhere can be a problem everywhere, pandemic experts say after US president takes aim at the UN health body. ‘China, not the WHO, should be held accountable’ for information supplied in the early days of the disease

US President Donald Trump’s attacks on the World Health Organisation and decision to withhold funds for the UN body could put global health and American interests at risk amid the coronavirus pandemic, experts say.

Trump accused the WHO of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus” that causes the Covid-19 disease, and spreading the Chinese government’s “disinformation” in the early days of the outbreak.

In Washington on Tuesday he said the US would withhold funds during an evaluation of up to 90 days to review the organisation’s response to the pandemic. It is unclear how Trump would halt payments, as changes to appropriations need US Congressional approval.

Public health experts in the US and officials in several countries were quick to condemn the move. They said it jeopardised the health security of the US and was detrimental to the global fight against the pandemic caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, for which there is no vaccine.

“Fighting a global pandemic requires international cooperation. When Sars-CoV-2 is permitted to circulate in human populations unabated anywhere, it threatens health security everywhere,” said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health programme at the non-profit Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

The US is the biggest financial contributor to the WHO, with its payments accounting for around 15 per cent of the organisation’s US$6.2 billion total budget over the last two years.



Bollyky and other experts pointed to the importance of the WHO as a central platform for monitoring and sharing data about Covid-19 and its spread. They also said it was a key source of technical guidance, support, and supplies to less-developed countries, to help them control the deadly respiratory disease that has infected more than 2 million people around the world.

Weakening the WHO’s ability to give that help could affect not just global health, but US plans to reopen its economy, said Olga Jonas, a senior fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute and a former economic adviser to the World Bank.

“An outbreak anywhere can be an epidemic everywhere. America has business all around the world, US [businesspeople] fly all around the world all the time, so if that [travel] can’t resume because of this announcement, then it’s an economically costly decision,” she said.

While public health experts have generally praised the WHO’s reaction to the pandemic, the organisation has been criticised for its initial response, with speculation that it bowed to pressure from China in delaying decisions like when to declare the disease an international emergency.

Trump accused the organisation of failing to “investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan” – the Chinese city where the disease was first detected – that conflicted with Beijing’s accounts, contributing to the spread of the disease and the resulting economic damage.

Just hours before Trump’s announcement, a group of Republican US senators accused the WHO of helping Beijing “cover up” the threat of the virus. They called for the WHO to release internal documents to aid in a Congressional investigation.

On January 9, the WHO posted an update including information from Chinese authorities that the virus “does not transmit readily between people”, although subsequent research and eyewitness accounts indicated the disease was already spreading from person to person, the senators said.

Jonas, who coordinated pandemic response plans at the World Bank, said it was unrealistic for the United States to expect the WHO to investigate information reported by member countries.

“It doesn’t have the capacity, it doesn’t have the money and it doesn’t have the mandate … It’s an intergovernmental organisation, and in every place where it acts, it is with the permission and invitation of the government,” she said. “They are not the CIA.”

The former head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service, John Sawers, added to the chorus of concern about the US move.
He told the BBC that he agreed that the Chinese government had concealed critical information about the outbreak, but Beijing – not the WHO – should be accountable for that.

US tech billionaire Bill Gates said Trump’s decision was “dangerous”.

“[The WHO’s] work is slowing the spread of Covid-19 and if that work is stopped no other organisation can replace them,” he wrote in a tweet. “The world needs WHO now more than ever.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of a number of health charities working with the European Commission to organise a donor’s conference to fund the creation and deployment of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Unveiling plans for the online conference on May 4, commission president Ursula von der Leyen pledged to continue working with the WHO.



Earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed deep cuts to WHO funding in its budget for next year.

The US provides financing through WHO-assessed member contributions and voluntary funding, which together came to US$893 million for the WHO’s 2018-2019 two-year budget.

A January 31 account statement for the US on the WHO website indicates the country, like other member states, makes multiple payments towards its yearly contributions. It also indicates that the US has outstanding payments from 2019 of around US$82 million to its assessed contributions and has yet to pay towards 2020.

A loss of US funding could ripple out across the WHO operations in various ways during the pandemic.



Professor Sara Davies, who specialises in global health governance and health diplomacy at Australia’s Griffith University, said the WHO might have to cut programmes and seek more aid from donors.

“Where we will probably see the effect of US funding is in other programmes that WHO will have to cut,” she said, noting the organisation had faced significant budget cuts in the past.

But this “deliberate political act” – a result of political jostling between US and China for political power within the United Nations – would harm the organisation if it came to pass, she said.

“The escalation of the US response during a health emergency is probably being looked upon with despair by the rest of the international community,” she said.

Joseph Lewnard, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley, said he feared that failures of the US response, along with these actions, would “irreparably damage the standing of the US as reliable partner to the global community and will simply leave us without a seat at the table”.

On Wednesday, Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, said there was “no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever”.

A review of the WHO response after a crisis would be a standard procedure, experts say. The organisation implemented reforms after an independent panel review of its handling of the 2014-2016 Ebola disease outbreak, which found it had a slow response and leadership failures.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University centre for health security, said such reforms should wait.

“It’s not the middle of a pandemic that you do this type of thing,” he said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
After 200,000 Orders in 2 Minutes: Xiaomi Accelerates Marketing in Europe
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
×