“It leaves Americans sick,” tweeted Sen. Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, “and America alone.”
Feeling lonely?
The Trump administration has officially informed both the United Nations and Congress that the U.S. will withdraw from the World Health Organization effective July 6, 2021.
“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” the president asserted, and covered up critical information about COVID-19, thereby enabling a very deadly worldwide pandemic.
And did so with the WHO’s help, he argues.
“Elements of Trump’s critique have resonated well beyond the White House,” notes the virulently anti-Trump Washington Post. “Foreign governments and current WHO advisers have questioned why the WHO amplified false Chinese claims in the early days of the outbreak and repeatedly praised Beijing as the virus spread.”
Back in April, President Trump demanded the WHO agree to “substantive improvements” within 30 days. “We will be terminating our relationship,” Trump announced a month later, “and directing those funds” to other global health efforts. This week, it was made official.
Funds? The U.S. is the largest donor nation, providing 15 percent of the WHO budget — more than $400 million in 2019. The BBC reports, “The withdrawal will call into question the WHO’s financial viability.”
Of course, many Democrats, global health experts, and editorial pages attacked the move as “dangerous,” “likely to cost lives” and lead to a loss of U.S. “influence.”*
Influence?
Those running the United Nations or its agencies cannot now ignore U.S. complaints.
The threat of funding cuts?
No longer are they mere bluster only for show.
Mr. Trump may feel lonesome . . . what other U.S. president would buck** the establishment to stop our tax dollars from flowing to an unaccountable U.N. agency?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* “On my first day as President,” Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden pledged on Twitter, “I will rejoin the WHO and restore our leadership on the world stage.”
** Some have disputed the president’s constitutional authority to unilaterally withdraw from the WHO. “[T]he U.S. joined the WHO via a joint resolution rather than through the mechanism set out in the Constitution’s Treaty Clause, it is what is sometimes termed an ex post congressional-executive agreement,” explains University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Jean Galbraith. “Presidents have withdrawn the U.S. from such agreements on a few prior occasions.”
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