Trump says he may consider rejoining the World Health Organization
President Donald Trump said on Saturday he may consider rejoining the World Health Organization, days after ordering a U.S. exit from the global health agency over what he described as a mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises, according to Reuters.
“Maybe we would consider doing it again, I don’t know. Maybe we would. They would have to clean it up,” Trump said at a rally in Las Vegas.
The U.S. is scheduled to leave the WHO on Jan. 22, 2026. Trump announced the move on Monday after he was sworn in for a second term in the White House.
The U.S. is by far the biggest financial backer of the WHO, contributing around 18% of its overall funding. The WHO’s most recent two-year budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion, the source said.
Trump told the crowd in Las Vegas he was unhappy that the U.S. paid more into the WHO than China, which has a much bigger population.
Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO was not unexpected. He took steps to quit the body in 2020 during his first term as president. Before the U.S. withdrawal could be completed last time, Joe Biden won the presidential election and put a stop to it on his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2021.
According to the New York Times, leaving the W.H.O. would mean, among other things, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have no access to the global data that the agency provides.
Lawrence O. Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, said that a United States withdrawal from W.H.O. would be “a grievous wound” to public health but an “even deeper wound to American national interests and national security.”
