President Donald Trump has ordered the United States out of the World Health Organization, undoing a reversal made four years earlier. The order, posted by the White House on January 21, 2025, says plainly that “the United States intends to withdraw from the WHO.”
The text undoes two earlier actions. It revokes the presidential letter of January 20, 2021, which had retracted the United States’ July 6, 2020 notification of withdrawal. It also revokes Executive Order 13987, issued on January 25, 2021 to organize the government’s response to COVID-19 and to establish US leadership on global health and security.
The reasons given
The order blames the WHO for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other health crises. It adds that the agency failed to adopt urgently needed reforms and could not show independence from the inappropriate political influence of its member states.
Money is the second complaint. The WHO “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments,” the order says. It offers China as the comparison: with a population of 1.4 billion, 300 percent of the US population, China contributes nearly 90 percent less.
What happens next
Three tasks fall to the Secretary of State and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who are told to move with all practicable speed. First, stop sending the agency any further federal money, support or resources. Second, pull back and reassign any government staff or contractors working with it. Third, find credible, transparent partners, American and international, to take over the activities the WHO previously carried out.
The Secretary of State must immediately tell the UN Secretary-General, any other applicable depositary and the WHO’s leadership about the withdrawal. While it is under way, the Secretary of State will also stop negotiating the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations. Actions taken to put those agreements into effect will carry no binding force on the United States.
Inside the White House, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs is to set up directorates and coordinating mechanisms within the National Security Council as he sees fit, to safeguard public health and strengthen biosecurity. The director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy has to review, rescind and replace the 2024 US Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable.
The order is to be carried out consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations. It creates no right or benefit enforceable in court by any party.
