Withdrawing from international organizations. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed executive orders to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement. As reasons for withdrawing from the WHO, Trump cited the political influence of member states and unfair contribution expectations of the United States, further alleging that the health group had mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic and other health emergencies. The president stated that the Paris Agreement also put unfair burdens on the United States, removing the U.S. from the international compact for the second time after President Joe Biden undid Trump’s withdrawal order from his first term. Both withdrawals will require one year to take effect, though federal health agencies have been ordered to stop working with the WHO immediately.
Back up: The World Health Organization is a United Nations agency that “connects nations, partners and people to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable,” according to the WHO’s website. Established in 1948, the WHO conducts research to inform global health policy, with a mandate specifically focused on the treatment of public health emergencies and the eradication of infectious diseases.
The Paris Agreement, also a UN initiative, was adopted at the 2015 UN Climate Climate Change Conference (COP21) and has 195 current signatories. As part of the voluntary pact, member nations agree to adopt policies aimed at keeping the yearly global average temperature increase at or below 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, with 3.6°F (2°C) as a secondary goal. The United States was the first country to withdraw from the pact in 2020 and remains the only country to do so, joining only Iran, Libya, and Yemen in abstaining from the agreement.
The move immediately sparked backlash from global leaders and critics among the scientific community. “The new U.S. president’s announcement to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) is a serious blow to the international fight against global health crises,” German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said.
“It’s very important that the United States remain in the Paris Agreement, and more than remain in the Paris agreement, that the United States adopts the kind of policies that are necessary to make the 1.5 degrees still a realistic objective,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” President Trump said while signing the order to withdraw from the WHO. The United States is by far the organization’s biggest donor, providing roughly 18% of the organization’s $6.8 billion two-year budget for 2024–2025. Though membership in the Paris accords does not cost the United States in direct funding, President Trump has said that committing to climate goals defined by the compact is unfair, hurting the United States’ ability to compete economically with China.
We’ll share what the right and left are saying about the withdrawals below. Then, Editor Will Kaback gives his take while Executive Editor Isaac Saul is on paternity leave.
What the right is saying.
- The right supports Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, arguing it was ineffective and doomed to fail regardless of what the U.S. does.
- Many also approve of withdrawing from WHO, suggesting the organization has become compromised by fealty to China.
- Others say the U.S. leaving the Paris Agreement is an opportunity for Europe to adopt more realistic climate goals.
National Review’s editors wrote about “forgetting Paris.”
“Trump regards the Paris accord as ‘unfair,’ ‘one-sided,’ and a ‘rip-off.’ While ‘one-sided’ is an exaggeration (European nations have done more to damage their economies in the interests of ‘Paris’ than the U.S. has), otherwise the agreement is indeed woefully misbegotten,” the editors said. “The emphasis placed in the Paris accord on cutting carbon emissions has also led to a massive reallocation of resources toward renewable (and other) technologies that were not and are not ready for prime time. Much of that money would be better devoted to nuclear power, adaptation, and strengthening resilience to whatever the climate may eventually bring our way.”
“There is another small problem with the Paris Agreement. It is failing, and it will continue to fail. Countries are, quite predictably, not sticking to their commitments, and their failure to abide by them will increase as the commitments become more onerous. The average global temperature in 2024 was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, crossing a threshold that Paris was meant to avoid,” the editors wrote. “Such targets are incompatible with political stability, surging global energy demand, and the reality that, even as GHG emissions fall in the Western world, they are rising in other poorer countries as they, too, aim for a better life.”
In The Washington Examiner, Martin Cullip argued “the WHO should blame its own failures for Trump’s withdrawal.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the WHO’s inadequacies on a global stage. Early in the crisis, the organization echoed Chinese Communist Party propaganda, downplaying the severity of the outbreak and delaying the declaration of a global health emergency. Meanwhile, brave whistleblowers in China, including doctors attempting to alert the world to the emerging threat, were silenced,” Cullip said. “Beyond its communication failures, the WHO’s pandemic response was marred by inefficiency and waste. Reports reveal that the organization spent $200 million annually on luxury travel, including first-class flights and five-star accommodations, a glaring misuse of funds meant to address urgent health crises.”
“Given these systemic problems, the U.S. is justified in reconsidering its relationship with the WHO. Terminating funding and withdrawing from the organization sends a clear message that American taxpayers will no longer subsidize an institution that prioritizes political agendas over public health,” Cullip wrote. “While withdrawing from the WHO, the U.S. must simultaneously invest in alternative mechanisms for global health collaboration. Bilateral partnerships, regional coalitions, and support for nongovernmental organizations can ensure the U.S. continues to play a leading role in addressing global health challenges without being tethered to a dysfunctional institution.”
In The Wall Street Journal, Joseph C. Sternberg said “Trump gives European leaders an excuse to dump bad policies.”
“Mr. Trump’s abandonment of the decade-old global climate agreement is as strong a signal as Washington can send that the new administration doesn’t care about an issue that Europeans have come to understand in quasireligious terms,” Sternberg wrote. “Note, however, that Mr. Trump at least isn’t perpetuating the far bigger affront President Biden committed against our European friends: lying to them. Mr. Biden acted as though there were a political consensus in America in support of the policies Europeans liked, when there was obviously none. The Democrat rejoined the Paris climate deal despite the Senate’s refusal over many years to ratify it and Mr. Trump’s first attempt to withdraw from it.”
“Mr. Trump, for all his inconstancy as an ally, at least now is telling Europe the truth about America. Which is the best thing any U.S. leader could do for them,” Sternberg said. “Europe can’t afford its climate commitments, whether the cost is measured in subsidies disbursed by cash-strapped governments or economic growth forgone. Yet European voters remain stubbornly committed to the policy goal for which they no longer want to pay. Mr. Trump is offering an off-ramp for politicians struggling to manage this cognitive dissonance.”
What the left is saying.
- The left opposes the WHO withdrawal, but some say Trump and the organization can still reach a compromise.
- Many criticize the decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, and the message it sends about the U.S.’s climate commitment.
- Others say Trump’s rapid withdrawal from international agreements is already hurting the global order.
The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote “Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is a mistake — but also an opportunity.”
“President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization could severely damage American interests. If his order stands, the U.S. government will find it more difficult to track and fight infectious diseases around the world. The United States’ relationships with allies will suffer, and its adversaries’ influence over the management of viral threats will increase,” the board said. “Yet it is still possible to avoid these outcomes. The Trump administration could make its withdrawal conditional and use it as leverage to negotiate needed reforms to the WHO.”
“Trump is right to point out that the United States funds a larger share of the organization’s budget than any of its peers do, including China and India, which have much larger populations. He is also correct to note that, during the covid pandemic, the WHO made critical missteps… But the reforms the WHO needs don’t involve addressing past grievances,” the board wrote. “The United States needs the WHO as much as the WHO needs the United States. America cannot stop pathogens from crossing its borders. It needs an international organization to monitor diseases the world over, especially in countries that are unlikely to welcome U.S. investigators. Meanwhile, the WHO needs the United States not only for its financial support but also for its public health expertise.”
In Bloomberg, Mark Gongloff called Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement “a moral disgrace.”
“It’s tempting to think of ways to play down Trump’s decision to abdicate global leadership on climate: He’s done this all before. The clean-energy transition is strong enough to overcome. Maybe China will save us,” Gongloff said. “But when you consider just how starkly isolated the US will be from the rest of the world on this issue — along with the fact that it is history’s most prolific carbon polluter and still the world’s biggest economy and second-largest carbon emitter after China — you can see Trump’s decision for what it is: a moral disgrace and an act of self-sabotage.”
“Trump’s sabotage adds momentum to the growing political backlash against climate action around the world, including in the European Union, which has the world’s third-largest economy and is its fourth-biggest carbon emitter. Green parties there took heavy losses in parliamentary elections last spring, and climate-skeptical far-right parties are gaining power,” Gongloff wrote. “It’s true that the aims of the Paris accords are rapidly slipping away… But the Paris accords have helped focus the world on climate action, which has made some of the direst warming forecasts less likely.”
In MSNBC, Hayes Brown said “America’s treaty withdrawal whiplash is making the world less safe.”
“The phrase ‘strategic ambiguity’ is often used to describe American policy toward China and Taiwan, where the U.S. never makes entirely clear how far it will go toward defending the island from the mainland. But that’s a very specific case of balancing competing interests. What we’re seeing from Trump is a much more random ambiguity that is bad for international relations. Withholding clarity gives other actors the chance to fill in the blanks in ways that may lead to misunderstandings that can be downright dangerous,” Brown wrote. “The back-and-forth over the Paris Agreement and the WHO and whichever other international bodies come under fire next is detrimental to the U.S. in both the short and long run.
“In the short term, it is entirely self-defeating to remove America’s diplomats and resources from a pool of resources that are meant to combat truly global threats. Pandemics and climate change don’t care about lines drawn on a map, as we’ve seen over the last five years,” Brown said. “In the long term, treaties and other vehicles of international law are meant to be the antithesis of ambiguity… The liberal rules-based order that the United States has overseen since the end of World War II has depended on the idea that these agreements are negotiated in good faith with nations that intend to abide by those words.”
My take.
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Today’s “My take” was written by Tangle Editor Will Kaback.
- Meeting the Paris commitments would have been tough, but it’s far better that we try than sit out completely.
- Pulling out of the WHO is an even worse decision for our interests — though the organization deserves plenty of criticism.
- All told, Trump is abdicating leadership on the global stage.
When I read about President Trump withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement, I wasn’t surprised; but it still felt like a bit of a gut punch. Setting aside the conspicuous problems with both international compacts, these withdrawals feel like an abrupt withering of the U.S. interest in global leadership. While Trump can justify his decisions based on some of the recent failures of the WHO and the Paris Agreement, the withdrawals still carry significant risks for public health and climate change mitigation, which the Trump administration has not shown a plan to address.
I come to this topic as someone who thinks the missions of the WHO and the Paris Agreement serve U.S. interests. However, I also think both have failed to execute their missions in meaningful ways and shoulder their share of the blame for growing U.S. skepticism about cooperating.
Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement won’t affect our climate change outlook much, but it is a missed opportunity to redirect U.S. climate policy toward a more realistic objective. The treaty’s goal of keeping global surface temperatures to roughly 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels is now practically unattainable after record-hot years in 2023 and 2024, and its secondary 2°C goal also appears to be in peril — a 2024 UN Environment Programme report stated that “emissions must fall 28 per cent by 2030 and 37 per cent from 2019 levels by 2035” to maintain the 2°C goal. Achieving those reductions would undoubtedly require massive, destabilizing changes to economic systems, which are neither desirable nor plausible.
However, that provides more justification for the United States to stay in, not to drop out of, the agreement. In his executive order announcing the withdrawal from the Paris accords, Trump even said the U.S. must play “a leadership role in global efforts to protect the environment” — but how can we lead from the sidelines? Withdrawing is a huge missed opportunity to direct international climate policy towards its biggest problems: China’s rise and finding alternative fuel sources.
Right now, Western countries are doing a pretty good job of reducing their CO2 emissions, particularly the U.S. The Rhodium Group consultancy recently estimated that even if the Trump administration rolls back all of Biden’s climate executive actions and repeals the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives, U.S. emissions would still be 24-40% below 2005 levels in 2035; but China’s output has increased enough to offset that positive momentum. Addressing that challenge is only possible through global partnerships, and by pulling out of the Paris Agreement, Trump is saying that the U.S. has no interest in even trying.
Domestically, Trump is also missing a large opportunity to combine a center-right “all of the above” energy policy with a center-left “abundance agenda,” one that maintains a seat at the table for petroleum and natural gas while we continue to invest in renewable technologies. Nuclear energy should also be part of this effort, and its adoption is squarely in line with both the Trump administration and Paris Agreement’s goals.
However, the impacts of withdrawing from the Paris treaty are less immediately concerning and less tangible than the repercussions of withdrawing from the WHO.
For one, we’re just emerging from a global pandemic that should serve as a stark reminder of how easily infectious diseases can spread in our connected world. In addition to Covid, growing fears about the spread of bird flu underscore the serious threats we’re dealing with right now. The WHO does critical work tracking new disease outbreaks and identifying emerging pathogens, and the U.S. withdrawal threatens its ability to aid this work and maintain the benefits we all receive from it.
Furthermore, our status as a global health leader within WHO is smart diplomacy and advances our national security interests. We can guide ongoing efforts to eradicate polio, protect children from diseases, and mitigate future outbreaks. We also receive benefits, like communications on transnational spread of dangerous viruses, scientific collaboration for each year’s seasonal flu vaccine, and access to information about emerging threats. Lastly, we can investigate global threats, as we did when U.S. scientists joined the WHO delegation that visited China in February 2020 to assess its Covid response.
As with the Paris Agreement, though, the WHO has significant problems that warrant scrutiny. Both Trump and public health experts have rightly criticized the effusive praise the WHO heaped on China in the early days of the pandemic, even as questions swirled about how the virus spread. In a critical moment for its mission, the WHO seemed more occupied with keeping China happy than fulfilling its obligations to the rest of the world. The organization also failed to acknowledge that Covid was airborne early on, providing more evidence that it was ill-prepared to meet the moment.
The WHO also has financial issues. Its reliance on voluntary contributions from members has, by its own assessment, created pervasive challenges for operations on a year-to-year basis (exacerbated by some questionable spending). Trump is right that the U.S. contributes a disproportionate amount to the WHO compared to China (even though he has exaggerated the magnitude of that difference), and we should push for fairer standards. While it is now starting to diversify its revenue sources, the organization’s reliance on the U.S. is evident in the measures it has already taken since Trump announced the withdrawal order — freezing recruitment and drastically scaling back its travel budget.
Furthermore, the organization’s decentralized governance structure seems to have contributed to its lackluster response to other recent public health threats, like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Finally, its dual role as a public health agency and an international coalition creates an inherent tension (seen in its deference to China at the outset of the pandemic).
With all these issues in mind, leaving the WHO is still not the answer; in fact, leaving will make our problems worse. In our absence, China would likely seek to step up to mold decisions to its will — how does that help the U.S.? If Trump wants to play tough with the WHO, why not stay involved but slash our funding commitments?
At the end of the day, my criticism of the Paris and WHO withdrawals is fundamentally the same: We should be using our leverage in these commitments, not dropping out entirely. We should push for other countries to pay their fair share and call out failures where they exist. We should seek to balance U.S. international commitments with its domestic ones. And we should be comfortable with changing our relationships if these issues persist. Instead, Trump’s taking a sledgehammer to a spiderweb — without realizing that our interests are just as entangled as the rest of the world’s.
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