President Donald Trump said he was open to potentially rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO), just days after he signed a Day One executive order that withdrew the U.S. from the international group.
During a rally at Circa Resort & Casino in Downtown Las Vegas, the president told those in attendance that it was unfair a country like China, with a population much greater than the U.S., was only paying a fraction of what the U.S. was paying annually to the WHO.
“We paid $500 million a year and China paid $39 million a year despite a much larger population. Think of that. China’s paying $39 million to have 1.4 billion people, we pay $500 million we have – no one knows what the hell we have, does anyone know? We have so many people pouring in we have no idea,” Trump told rally goers on Saturday.
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“They offered me at $39 million, they said ‘We’ll let you back in for $39 million,’ they’re going to reduce it from [$500 million] to [$39 million], and I turned them down, because it became so popular I didn’t know if it would be well received even at [$39 million], but maybe we would consider doing it again, I don’t know, they have to clean it up a bit.”
WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting in Beijing in 2020. (Naohiko Hatta/Pool Photo via AP, File)
An analysis of national contributions to the WHO from NPR found that the U.S. pays for roughly 10% of the WHO’s budget, while China pays about 3%.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the WHO in an executive order issued hours after he was sworn into office last week. The president cited reasons such as WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms,” and “unfairly onerous payments” forced on the U.S. During Trump’s first term, in July 2020, he took steps to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO but his successor, former President Joe Biden, eventually reinstated the nation’s participation in the global health initiative.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the WHO in an executive order issued hours after he was sworn into office. (Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File Photo)
The president’s complaints about the U.S. paying too much to the WHO mirror his complaints about U.S. participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well. During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Trump said he was asking all NATO nations to contribute 5% of their gross domestic products to NATO defense spending.
NATO set a threshold of 2% that countries must pay in 2014, but, according to Trump, “most nations didn’t pay” until he began pushing for other countries to contribute more. Still, according to NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte, countries like Spain, Italy and Canada have yet to even meet that 2% contribution.
Secretary-General Mark Rutte holds a press conference at NATO headquarters on Dec. 4, 2024, in Brussels, Belgium. (Omar Havana/Getty Images)
Following Trump’s demands that NATO members spend 5% of their gross domestic product, he questioned whether the U.S. should be spending anything on NATO at all, telling reporters from the Oval Office that the U.S. was protecting NATO members, but those same members are “not protecting us.”
“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
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The White House declined to comment for purposes of this story.