TRUMP PULLS WHO CASH & BLASTS CHINA ON PANDEMIC
US President Donald Trump has announced he will withdraw funding from the World Health Organisation, end Hong Kong’s special trade status and suspend visas of Chinese graduate students suspected of conducting research on behalf of their government.
Mr Trump has expressed anger at the World Health Organisation (WHO) for weeks over what he has portrayed as an inadequate response to the initial outbreak of coronavirus in China’s Wuhan province late last year.
In a White House announcement on Friday sure to escalate tensions with China that have already surged during the pandemic, he claimed Chinese officials “ignored” their reporting obligations to the WHO and pressured the body to mislead the public about an outbreak that has now killed more than 100,000 Americans.
On the WHO, Mr Trump said: “We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engaged with them directly, but they have refused to act. Because they have failed to make the requested and greatlyneeded reforms, we will be today terminating the relationship.”
The US is the largest source of financial support for the WHO, and its exit is expected to significantly weaken the organisation.
Mr Trump said the US will be “redirecting” the money to “other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs”.
He noted America contributes about $450m (£360m) to the WHO, while China provides about $40m (£32m).
In April when the president first proposed withholding money from the WHO, Democrats said such a move would be illegal without approval from Congress and that they would challenge it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called the move “an act of extraordinary senselessness”.
Other critics of the administration’s decision to cut funding called it misguided, saying it would undermine an important institution that is leading vaccine development efforts and drug trials to address the Covid-19 outbreak.
The WHO declined to comment on the announcement.
At an event later on Friday, Mr Trump was asked about relations with China, and he repeated his earlier suspicions about how the country managed to apparently contain the virus in Wuhan while it spread to Europe and the United States.
“Well, we’re certainly not happy with what happened with respect to China,” he told reporters.
Tensions over Hong Kong have increased over the past year as China has cracked down on protesters and sought to exert more control over the former British territory.
Mr Trump said his administration will now begin eliminating the “full range” of agreements that had given Hong Kong a relationship with the US that mainland China lacks, including exemptions from controls on certain exports. He said the State Department will begin warning US citizens of the threat of surveillance and arrest when visiting the city.
“China has replaced its promised formula of one country, two systems, with one country, one system,” he said.
Yesterday, a British expert said there was “no logic” in the US terminating its relationship with the World Health Organisation.
Dr Stephen Griffin, associate professor in the School of Medicine, University of Leeds, said: “Pandemics are, by definition, a global crisis. To not face Covid-19 with a united front seems futile.
“Given the scale of the outbreak in the US, this action appears nothing short of an attempt to refocus attention away from how this has been handled.”
Dr Gail Carson, director of network development at the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium, said that during a pandemic was not the time to make health political.
Dr Carson, a consultant in infectious diseases at the University of Oxford, added: “If there was a time not to make health political it is now, when the world is in the throes of a pandemic. Now is the time for solidarity.”