Trump announces US to sever all ties with WHO
Trump spends majority of White House speech attacking
China
Health body has ‘failed to make the greatly needed
reforms’.
Julian
Borger in Washington
Fri 29 May
2020 22.40 BSTLast modified on Sat 30 May 2020 04.56 BST
Donald
Trump has announced the severance of all US ties with the World Health
Organisation, three weeks ahead of a deadline he laid down earlier this month.
In a speech
in the White House Rose Garden which was chiefly devoted to castigating China,
and threatening new sanctions over its actions in Hong Kong, the president
claimed that “China has total control over” the WHO.
“We have
detailed the reforms that it must make and engage with them directly, but they
have refused to act because they have failed to make the requested and greatly
needed reforms,” Trump said.
“We will be
today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and
redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public
health needs.”
The US is
the biggest funder of the global health body, paying about $450m in membership
dues and voluntary contributions for specific programmes.
On May 19,
Trump sent a four-page letter to the WHO director general Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus warning he would permanently cut US funding of the WHO and
reconsider US membership if the organisation did “not commit to major
substantive improvements within the next 30 days.”
He
announced US withdrawal on Friday, only 10 days after the letter.
After that
ultimatum was announced, a few US health officials urged the WHO to signal its
willingness to change to the Trump administration in the hope it would change
the president’s mind, but US sources said there was no concerted dialogue
between the administration and the WHO over reform.
Earlier
this month, the World Health Assembly (WHA) of member states agreed there
should be a thorough review of the organisation’s response to the pandemic.
The US had
lobbied to have Taiwan invited to the assembly as an observer, and had
significant western support for the proposal. But European diplomats said the
US was half-hearted in its campaign and lost the tussle with China.
“What’s
interesting, looking at the last WHA meeting for me, was a very clear sign that
American influence has diminished significantly,” said Abraham Denmark, a
former deputy assistant secretary of defence for East Asia. “It was
embarrassing that we weren’t able to wrangle international support for our
policy goals in that meeting, and that China was able to really get what they
needed out of that.”
The move
appeared to confirm the suspicions of many in the WHO and in western capitals
that Trump never intended to seek reforms or open a dialogue with the WHO, but
left the body for political reasons. He has sought to blame it for the depth of
the coronavirus pandemic in the US.
“It was
never about reforming the WHO. That was all lies,” Democratic Senator Chris
Murphy, said on Twitter. “It was always about distraction and scapegoating.
Leaving castrates our ability to stop future pandemics and elevates China as
the world’s go-to power on global health. What a nightmare.”
On a day in
which several US cities were still reeling from a night of protests and looting
which had erupted after the death of George Floyd, the president did not
address the unrest – or the murder charge brought upon the white police officer
who was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck.
Instead,
Trump’s speech on Friday was mostly focused on China, reviving longstanding
complaints about Beijing’s trade practices, blaming Beijing for the pandemic,
and denouncing its imposition of a harsh Chinese security law on Hong Kong. He
confirmed that the US would restrict entry to Chinese students, and cease to
treat Hong Kong as autonomous, ending preferential trade relations.
He also
said there would be sanctions against Chinese officials.
“The US
will also take necessary steps to sanction PRC [People’s Republic of China] and
Hong Kong officials directly or indirectly involved in eroding Hong Kong’s
autonomy,” he said.
Leaving the
WHO would mean abrogating a treaty, the latest in a series of international
agreements Trump has pulled out of. The US is the only member state which can
legally withdraw from the WHO, a privilege Washington insisted on before it
ratified the WHO constitution.
Amanda
Glassman, the executive-vice president of the Centre for Global Development,
said that the US had extensive ties to the WHO, and would lose a lot of
influence on global health research and policy-making.
“We have
very deep and long relationships with the WHO as the space where we coordinate
global health policy” Glassman said. “I think it’s totally inefficient to do it
in a bilateral manner.”
Beth
Cameron, a biologist and former senior official in the National Security
Council said on Twitter: “There aren’t words for how much this decision will
hurt the US, our global partners, and our ability to to impact the #COVID19
pandemic that is a threat to our national and global peace and security.”
Trump turns against WHO to mask his own stark
failings on Covid-19 crisis
Dishonest decision to pull funding from World Health
Organization will endanger public health
Julian
Borger in Washington
Wed 15 Apr
2020 02.29 BSTLast modified on Wed 15 Apr 2020 20.25 BST
Donald
Trump’s declared suspension of funding of the World Health Organization in the
midst of a pandemic is confirmation – if any were needed – that he is in search
of scapegoats for his administration’s much delayed and chaotic response to the
crisis.
The US is
the WHO’s biggest donor, with funding over $400m a year in both assessed
contributions (membership fees) and donations – though it is actually $200m in
arrears.
Theoretically
the White House cannot block funding of international institutions mandated by
Congress. But the administration has found ways around such constitutional
hurdles on other issues – by simply failing to disburse funds or apply
sanctions, for example.
The funding
could be formally rescinded, but that would require Senate approval, or
“reprogrammed” by being diverted to another purpose that the White House could
argue is consistent with the will of Congress.
“Whatever
form it takes, this is a deeply shortsighted and dangerous decision - at any
time, let alone during a ... pandemic,” said Alexandra Phelan, assistant
professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown
University.
“It’s a
bizarre decision that would be profoundly detrimental to global public health,”
said Gavin Yamey, the director of Duke University’s center for policy impact in
global health. “He’s trying to distract from his own errors that have led to
the worst government response to Covid-19 on Earth.”
Public
health officials generally agree that the WHO’s response to the pandemic has
not been perfect, but much improved on the organisation’s lambasted performance
in the face of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and immeasurably better than how the
US has handled Covid-19.
The WHO
first raised the alert over the Wuhan outbreak on 5 January, and beginning on 7
January it was briefing public health officials from the US and other national
governments on the outbreak in regular teleconference calls. On 9 January the
WHO distributed guidance to member states for their own risk assessment and
planning.
Trump and
his supporters have focused on a 14 January WHO tweet reporting the findings of
preliminary Chinese studies suggesting “no clear evidence” of human-to-human
transmission.
While the
WHO was obliged to report on the latest findings of a member state at the
source of the outbreak, its officials told their counterparts in technical
briefings on 10 and 11 January, and briefed the press on 14 January, that
human-to-human transmission was still a strong possibility given the experience
of past coronavirus epidemics and urged suitable precautions.
Yamey said
it was ridiculous to point to a single tweet early in the pandemic as the fixed
position of the WHO. “The whole point of science is that we have initial
hypotheses and initial ideas, and we update those ideas as more and more data
emerges,” he said.
On 23
January the WHO updated its account of the coronavirus threat, confirming
human-to-human transmission and warning that the global risk was high. One week
later it formally declared a global emergency.
Announcing
the cut in funding on Tuesday, Trump accused the WHO of failing to send its
experts to the source of the outbreak to gather samples. That failure
decisively set back the effect to contain the pandemic, he claimed.
In fact
Beijing blocked a WHO delegation from visiting Wuhan in the first weeks of the
outbreak. The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had to fly to
Beijing to meet Xi Jinping on 29 January to negotiate entry and information
sharing. A WHO team was allowed to visit Wuhan on 22 February. Tedros has been
criticised for his flattery of Xi and the Chinese response, in the face of
Beijing’s obstructionism and cover-up attempts. His defenders said that such
diplomacy was the price for entry.
Trump did
more than his own fair share of Xi flattery. On 24 January, the president
tweeted “China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus … The
United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency.”
The claim
that the delay in the WHO acquiring samples crippled the international response
is also false. Chinese scientists publicly released the genetic sequence of
Covid-19 on 11 January.
By early
February the WHO was in a position to distribute a Covid-19 test worldwide, but
the US government opted not to have it fast-tracked through approval. The US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instead produced its own test
at about the same time, but it was flawed and had to be recalled. US testing
would be set back more than six weeks compared to the rest of the world.
While
virtually no testing was under way in the US throughout February, Trump assumed
the consequently low number of confirmed US cases meant that his country had
somehow escaped. “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” he
boasted on 24 February, nearly a month after the WHO declaration of emergency.
“We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World
Health [Organisation] have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market
starting to look very good to me!”
Trump’s turn
against the WHO only gathered pace over the past week, as more and more reports
emerged of the administration’s own complacent and dysfunctional response.
The impact
of a block on US funds is likely to mitigated by other countries, who have
almost unanimously expressed confidence in the WHO, stepping up their own
financial backing. The UK, for example, has announced £200m in new funding for
international efforts to contain and combat the pandemic, of which £65m is
earmarked for the WHO.
How well
Trump’s scapegoating of the WHO will play in the US election is impossible to
predict, but on the world stage it will undoubtedly be seen as yet another step
in an accelerating US abdication of global leadership.
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