President Trump speaking at the White House on Friday.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
President Trump said on Friday that the United States would be terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization, after weeks of accusing the organization of being too credulous regarding China’s information about the start of the pandemic.
“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Mr. Trump said in remarks in the White House Rose Garden. “Countless lives have been taken and profound economic hardship has been inflicted all around the globe.”
Mr. Trump offered little to address the deaths of 100,000 Americans who have died of the coronavirus, focusing on blaming China for “instigating a global pandemic.”
The world’s pre-eminent global health organization, the W.H.O. has been targeted by the Trump administration for its handling of global data as the virus spread. As he has repeatedly faced questions about his own handling of the pandemic, Mr. Trump continued to take aim at the W.H.O., threatening in a letter this month to pull funding if it did not “commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days.”
Other member nations of the W.H.O. had rebuffed the president’s demands, instead deciding to conduct an “impartial, independent” examination of the W.H.O.’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The W.H.O.’s budget for 2020 and 2021 is about $2.4 billion a year. In 2018 and 2019, the United States, the W.H.O.’s single largest donor, contributed about 20 percent of the organization’s budget.
