Trump goes after WHO(m)?

April 15, 2020

Alex Kliment

https://www.gzeromedia.com/trump-goes-after-who-m

After days of criticizing the World Health Organization for being too lenient with China over Beijing's opaque mismanagement of the initial coronavirus outbreak, and too slow to communicate the risk for the rest of the world, US President Donald Trump said late Tuesday that the US plans to stop funding the WHO for 60-90 days.

Why does it matter?

The US is by far the largest single funder of the 194-member World Health Organization, contributing as much as $500 million every two years in dues and voluntary contributions.

Why is he doing it?

First, there are important and legitimate questions here about whether the WHO was too credulous of China's early claims, and whether it moved too slowly to declare a global pandemic. To be fair, cutting funding to the WHO in the middle of a global health emergency might not be the wisest way to get that accountability, but it's bold. The WHO, for its part, says it has limited leverage over individual nation-states anyway, and that it acted in line with the available data.

Second, there's a US-China angle. The Trump administration, with significant bipartisan support, sees China as a global rival these days. One big beef is China's growing clout at UN-affiliated international organizations. By cutting off the WHO, even for two or three months, Washington is sending Beijing a message that it's willing to play hardball with organizations that seem to cut China slack. But this can backfire too: when the US pulls back from these organizations, China gets a bigger vacuum to fill.

Third, there's domestic politics. Trump knows that the coronavirus pandemic has hurt his chances of re-election (his critics say that's because he's bungled the crisis, while he's mainly worried about the collapsing economy). He knows that hitting out in China is good politics with his base. His move here comes right as Senate GOP bigwigs open their own investigations into the WHO and China.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the virus doesn't care what Trump thinks of the WHO. For Trump to really make political hay out of this, he has to be reasonably confident that the US is moving past the "peak" of coronavirus deaths. If the public health crisis takes another turn for the worse, that will overshadow any political benefit to him and his re-election campaign.