January 23, 2025 - 10:00am
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) has caused predictable conniptions among public health experts. It’s the second time Trump has made this move. The first was in July 2020, six months before the end of his first term. Given that the formal process for a country to exit WHO takes over a year, there was only limited practical impact before Joe Biden was able to reverse the policy. This time, the decision has been taken at the very start of a four-year term, suggesting that the WHO faces a truly serious crisis.
The official reasons given for the withdrawal are the WHO’s mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, refusal to countenance reforms, and — in a thinly-disguised reference to China — the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states”.
Concerns over the WHO predate the pandemic. Over many years, it has moved from focusing directly on reducing the global burden of disease towards a preoccupation with influencing public health policy in a particular ideological direction. This has seen the WHO push for the global legalisation of abortion along with the implementation of radical policies on transgender rights and sex education. Never mind that in many of its member states, the majority of people remain firmly opposed to such moves.
Indeed, the fact that the WHO’s recommendations to children aged six and even younger should include information about “early childhood masturbation” and that 9 to 12-year-olds should be enabled to “make a conscious decision to have sexual experiences or not” might be seen by some as more than enough justification for any country to leave the organisation.
However, it was the Covid pandemic that really saw momentum build for withdrawal. On almost every issue, the WHO seemed to be on the wrong side of both evidence and ethics. It acceded to Chinese pressure to dismiss the lab-leak theory, backed lockdowns, argued in favour of school closures, promoted masks even in primary schools, supported vaccinating children, and refused to oppose unethical vaccine mandates.
The ineffectiveness of most mainstream pandemic policies is well-known, to say nothing of their disastrous impact on education, mental health and economic and social wellbeing. But not only did the WHO pressure member states to implement these failed approaches, it also made strenuous efforts to ensure critical voices were shut down. The WHO actually boasts of how it worked both with social media companies and national governments, including Britain’s, to censor alternative views.
And now, far from reflecting on its failures, the WHO has sought to double down, pushing its controversial new pandemic treaty. The original draft would have given the organisation the power to force national governments to impose restrictions and mandates during a pandemic. That proved to be a step too far for many countries and the WHO was forced to tone down its proposals. But even now, the aim seems to be to entrench the WHO’s role and influence above national governments. No wonder the Trump administration, with its America First agenda, is not minded to look any more favourably on the WHO than it did in 2020.
So where does the WHO go from here? Optimists inside the organisation may believe that Trump’s announcement is really about money. The US is by far the biggest annual WHO donor (the second is the Gates Foundation), something Trump has frequently highlighted. They might judge that Trump will not want to risk China becoming even more influential in a post-US WHO and that a lower funding settlement will be enough to persuade him to bring America back into the fold.
Proceeding on that basis could prove a risky strategy. Exiting the WHO was a popular move among Trump’s core supporters. Further, Elon Musk, now so influential in the Trump administration, has long warned against countries ceding authority to supranational bodies such as the WHO, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr, nominee to be the next US health secretary, is a well-known opponent of much of its agenda.
In that context, it seems unlikely that Trump will reverse course, even if he is offered a reduced membership bill. And, if the WHO somehow manages to persuade other countries to make up for the loss of American funds, it is hard to see how it can maintain its legitimacy and influence without the US on board.
The WHO may now face a difficult choice between a gradual decline into irrelevance or undertaking a fundamental reform of its ethos and agenda. For a start, that would mean the organisation recognising the many serious mistakes it has made. Recent experience does not provide confidence that the WHO will be willing or able to go down such a path.
David Paton is a Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School.
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SubscribeIn what way does the existence of the ultra rich make the rest of us poorer?
Attempts by governments to extract more money from them inevitably seem to lead to more squeezes on ordinary responsible savers
“In what way does the existence of the ultra rich make the rest of us poorer?”
BECAUSE THEY HAVE DOUBLED THEIR MONEY IN THE LAST 18 MONTHS BY REDISTRIBUTING THE MONEY FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS AND WORKERS AND POOR TO THEMSELVES !!!!!!!!!!
They are stealing your wealth if you are typical Middle Class, and here is how it works:
They get the government, which they own as they are ‘The Donor Class’ and finance all the campaigns, etc, like Zucker gave $450,000,000 YES, half a billion to defeat Trump – that is how they roll, Plus they make sure every politico who does their work becomes filthy rich – think of every one of them, Pelosi worth over two hundred million, Blair, Clintons, Miliband… all of them…
Sooo – The Fed, BoE, ECB, all print TRILLIONS, which can never be paid off – so they must use Inflation to make it melt away. Inflation is a TAX. It eats your savings, pensions, spending power, and pay. The Trillions ended up in the filthy Rich pockets where they keep it by getting VAST loans for no interest that they buy assets with, which inflation will melt the debt away leaving the free assets – appreciating and dividend paying assets!!!!! That is on top of just getting the money handed to them – by QE and all the issuing of $ mostly goes right to them…
Sooo – the Corrupt Government prints $10,000,000,000,000 into existence by creating debt, which 90% goes to the filthy rich – then it is all paid back by the Inflation Tax inflation away the working folks savings and pay and spending power to erase the debt, See????
YOU PAY FOR EVERY CORRUPT 10 TRILLION THEY HAVE STOLEN BY THE COVID RESPONSE – YOU ARE POORER, THEY RICHER!!!!!!!!!!!
You silly economically illiterate sheep watch some good education, or just stay sheep and get eaten…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WyEPltVWMM
Realize that the proposed tax on unrealized gains is probably unconstitutional and is certainly totally inappropriate. Not only will be billionaires find loopholes and ways to get round the tax, but the downstream consequences may be incalculable. After all, once established for billionaires why not to millionaires, and then ultimately to anybody who holds any stock at all.
But the fundamental problem is that the proposal entail double taxation. Let us say one has to pay 1% tax on unrealized capital gains. First, one would probably have to sell stock every year to be able to pay that which would not only rapidly deplete one’s unrealized capital but more importantly would involve also paying additional capital gains taxes on stocks that one has sold to come up with the cash to pay the “wealth” tax. Second, it fails to take into account that unrealized capital gains are vaporware. The stock market doesn’t remain constant. Yes it goes up, but it also goes down. You can bet that there won’t be rebates if one’s unrealized gains drop by 50% in a year. But they certainly can do so – all one needs to do is look back to 2008 and for that matter to Feb/March 2020. Third, such a tax is simply unamerican. It is completely unreasonable for the Government to make money off the risks made by others – i.e. the government takes all the money but bears none of the risks. The same is also true of capital gains taxes which in the US, in contrast to the UK, are not indexed for inflation. That’s important because stock held for long periods of time and then sold may appear to have made massive gains but in fact when indexed against inflation represent only very meagre gains.
Lastly, the politics of envy which is all that this is, is simply destructive. Sure Elon Musk is unfathomably wealthy. But he deserves every penny, and when it comes to electric vehicles he is light years ahead of all the major car manufacturers. The Tesla is a combination of not only superb engineering (with 0 to 60 mph is less 3 sec) but the hardware/firmware/software controlling the car is astounding. Right now, there is only assisted driving which is very helpful on long freeway (motorway) trips, but it wont be long before driving will be on almost complete auto-pilot. And Musk is leading the way. Similarly he is leading the way in terms of rocket development and ultimately space exploration as NASA and the US Government have clearly failed to live up to their initial promise after the first set of Moon landings and space shuttle trips.
So let Musk keep his billions. He puts it to a lot better use than any Government ever could, and in the process advances mankind (which is certainly more than can be said for the current Biden administration).
There is a great video series on Musk at his spaceX site here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
i think its very illustrative of the difference between private enterprise and government projects. When Musk talks about the cost of lift/weight to cost ratio, the ambition is to make space travel as cheap as possible, to make it accessible to as many as possible ( not necessarily everyone) was that even an ambition under NASA, they didn’t need to make it cheaper because they had effectively infinite money to accomplish their goals. That isnt to knock NASA’s historical achievements only to say, where are they now? they are effectively going to be a regulator for spaceX or Virgin or Bezo’s one.
“Sure Elon Musk is unfathomably wealthy. But he deserves every penny, and when it comes to electric vehicles he is light years ahead of all the major car manufacturers.”
His money is mostly money given to him by Government and all manner of weird devices like C)2 Credits. He loses money on each car but makes profit on them by the C02 credits….
I think him the least evil of the tech monsters though. Zukerberg, Google, Amazon, Dorsey, Gates, are all totally tied up in creating the global surveillance state which will enslave us all. They are the Dogs the Pigs (Global Elite) use to maintain their total power in Animal Farm…
“If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak […] Instead – she did not know why – they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
There’s a load of “Debunking Elon Musk” -type videos on YouTube.
The rich like Bezos are only getting richer to such extremes is because of globalisation. Big companies can get exponentially bigger, and can get so big they can destroy any competition and dictate to governments. It’s the inevitable monopolisation that often occurs, just on a global scale. Crony capitalism, state subsidisation, lobbyists, backhanders, lack of competition. It always happens, whether it’s private or state run, because power corrupts
When you say ‘get richer’ you mean in terms of unrealised valuations. This is not really the same thing, someone like Musk is more of a paper tiger as the cashflow woes of Tesla demonstrate.
“someone like Musk is more of a paper tiger”
OK, that is today’s crazy post. He is one of the worlds most dangerious Tigers – he may be less evil than the other most blood-lusting and powerful Tigers, but he is one of them!
I’m all in on replacing all intra-country wealth transfer taxes with mark-to-market, algorithm-based wealth taxes and the end of central banks.
I look more nostalgically at the French Revolution every day.