US formally exits World Health Organization, locking in Trump’s break from global health body

The United States has formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday. 

Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office in 2025 announcing the intention of the U.S. to withdraw from the WHO due to its mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a host of other issues the president took issue with, such as “onerous payments” that didn’t match contributions from other member states. 

A year later, nearly to the day, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of State announced that the withdrawal from the health organization is complete. 

The U.S. has been a member of the WHO since its establishment in 1948. The WHO is a specialized agency within the United Nations responsible for coordinating global public health efforts, including disease surveillance and outbreak response. 

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At the heart of the withdrawal is the Trump administration’s dissatisfaction with the agency for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its ties to China. 

“The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread,” HHS said in a press release on the official withdrawal. “During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China’s response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission.” 

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A senior HHS official stressed to the media during a call Thursday previewing the withdrawal that the U.S. will remain a global leader on public health following the change. 

The senior HHS official said that despite the U.S. funding up to 25% of the WHO’s operations, there has never been a U.S. director of the organization, while citing other nations that have provided far less funding to the organization. 

The U.S. is “walking away” from organizations that “fail the United States,” the official said, and is not walking away from “being a global health leader,” pointing to the Department of State inking multiyear bilateral agreements on Global Health Cooperation with dozens of countries in December 2025. The official said more updates on the agreements are forthcoming. 

Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a fiery prerecorded speech for the World Health Assembly in May 2025, slamming the WHO for becoming “mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest and international power politics.”

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“While the United States has provided the lion’s share of the organization’s funding historically, other countries such as China have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public,” he said. 

“Not only has the WHO capitulated to political pressure from China, it’s also failed to maintain an organization characterized by transparency and fair governance,” he continued. “The WHO often acts like it has forgotten that its members must remain accountable to their own citizens and not to transnational or corporate interests.” 

Trump formally initiated a WHO withdrawal under his first administration in 2020, sparking sharp criticisms from Democrats who argue leaving the organization weakens global disease surveillance and leaves the United States less prepared to respond to future pandemics.

Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi described the withdrawal as “true senselessness” in 2020, arguing “millions of lives” were at risk.

The withdrawal from the WHO comes as President Donald Trump is in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, which has been underscored by Trump’s pressure on Europe to strike a deal for the U.S. to control Greenland.