Trump threatens permanent freeze on WHO funding

President gives UN body 30-day deadline to make ‘major improvements’

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to permanently cut U.S. funding to the World Health Organization and “reconsider” membership of the global health body if the WHO does not adopt “major substantive improvements” within 30 days.

Trump’s demands, made in a letter Tuesday to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, are an escalation of his attacks on the organization. He accused the WHO of “repeated missteps” during the coronavirus pandemic and demanded it “demonstrate independence” from China.

“My administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste,” Trump wrote in his ultimatum, which comes about a month after he froze WHO funding pending a formal investigation into the international health body and its coronavirus response.

The letter lists Trump’s allegations that the UN agency missed warning signs of the virus’ spread and then blithely accepted China’s lack of transparency over the outbreak, such as whether the coronavirus could be transmitted between humans. The WHO initially circulated preliminary Chinese claims that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus. In his letter, Trump did not outline specific actions the WHO needs to take to satisfy his demands. On Monday, Trump called the UN’s health body a “puppet of China.”

Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, said Trump’s letter was “smearing and slandering China’s efforts in epidemic prevention and to shift responsibility in its own incompetence in handling the epidemic.” The WHO said in a statement it was “considering the contents” of Trump’s letter, but otherwise it had no further comment.

The organization has previously disputed claims from the Trump administration that it acted too slowly in sounding the alarm over coronavirus. Public health experts have long warned the agency is overly bureaucratic and in need of reform. Little evidence has emerged to substantiate accusations from Trump administration officials that the WHO deliberately acted in concert with China to obfuscate what it knew about the outbreak.

On Monday, Ghebreyesus said he would launch an independent evaluation of the WHO’s coronavirus response “at the earliest appropriate moment.” And China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said he would support an independent investigation into the pandemic, though it remains unclear whether any such review would probe the origins of the virus. Trump has floated theories, without giving evidence, that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the virus first emerged late last year.

The U.S. is the WHO’s biggest donor. It paid $400 million (U.S.) to the WHO for 20182019, according to the organization’s website. That money represents about 15 per cent of the WHO’s budget.