The United States is walking away from the World Health Organization for the second time. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14155 on January 20, 2025, ordering a full withdrawal. The move strips the WHO of its largest single donor and pulls American scientists and disease trackers out of the global health agency.
The order is titled “Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization.” It is not a suspension of dues or a renegotiation. It is an exit.
The WHO is a specialized United Nations agency. It runs the world’s disease surveillance networks, coordinates outbreak responses, sets vaccine standards, and manages the global polio eradication campaign. The United States has been a member since the organization was founded. American officials have helped write its rules, fund its programs, and staff its initiatives.
That ends now.
The Trump administration has long argued the WHO is ineffective. The report on the order states the administration sees the organization as inefficient. The White House wants to reassert American sovereignty in international affairs. Withdrawing from the WHO is the mechanism for that.
There is real risk here. The WHO runs the global disease surveillance systems that catch outbreaks before they cross borders. The United States has been a major contributor to those systems. American labs share flu strains through WHO networks. American epidemiologists help track measles, Ebola, and emerging pathogens in places where the U.S. has no bilateral presence. That information flows both ways. When a new virus appears in a remote village, the WHO is often the first to know. The U.S. has relied on that early warning.
Without American membership, that access is not guaranteed. The order does not create a replacement system. The Trump administration has proposed alternative arrangements for global health, but the report provides no details on what those arrangements look like or how they would function.
The financial hit is enormous. The United States is the WHO’s largest donor. No other country pays as much. A withdrawal means a gap in the agency’s budget that other member states cannot easily fill. Programs that depend on American money — polio eradication, maternal health campaigns, emergency response teams — will face cuts or collapse.
This is the second time the U.S. has ordered a withdrawal from the WHO. The first attempt, also under Trump, was reversed by the Biden administration before it took full effect. The current order is signed. It is in force. There is no indication of a reversal.
The implications for American global health initiatives are direct. The WHO has played a critical role in supporting disease surveillance. The U.S. has been a major contributor to those efforts. The order severs that connection. American researchers will lose access to WHO data platforms. American companies that manufacture WHO-prequalified vaccines and medicines may face new barriers in international markets. American diplomats will no longer sit at the table when global health rules are written.
The WHO will continue to exist. It will continue to coordinate responses to outbreaks. But it will do so without the participation of the country that helped build it. The United States will go its own way. What that way looks like is not yet clear. What is clear is that the old arrangement is over.
