Trump threatens to exit WHO, leaving Xi to lead virus fight

Bloomberg

US President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw altogether from the World Health Organization (WHO), a move that would leave Chinese leader Xi Jinping as the most prominent voice leading the global fight against the pandemic.
In a four-page letter detailing his grievances with the WHO, Trump called on the group to “demonstrate independence from China,” renewing a complaint that led him in April to temporarily suspend US funding. He posted the letter on Twitter.
“If the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organisation,” Trump wrote to Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In his tweet, Trump called the letter “self-explanatory.” Still, he gave no other details about the reforms he was seeking or what specific changes might unlock funding.
Trump made the letter public hours after Xi addressed the Geneva-based group’s governing body, the World Health Assembly, by video link. Xi promised to devote $2 billion toward fighting the pandemic over the next two years while urging greater international cooperation to defeat the virus, which has infected 4.8 million people worldwide and killed more than 318,000.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Trump’s letter was “full
of insinuations” and aimed “to mislead the public and to achieve the purpose of stigmatising China’s epidemic control efforts while shirking its own responsibility.” He added that WHO member fees were decided by all member states, and the US has an obligation to pay the full amount.
“Arbitrarily cutting funding to an international organisation is unilateralist behaviour,” Zhao said. “We urge the US to stop passing the buck and deepen international cooperation.”
The WHO has become fully ensconced in a wider US-China fight for global dominance that has touched everything from trade and technology to university students and journalists. And similar to the trade war, Trump’s “America First” policy has made Xi look more like a champion of the international order.
“If Trump were to make good on his threat, it would leave the door wide open for China to increase its influence within the WHO even further,” said Hugo Brennan, principal Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft.
“Greater influence within the WHO would make it easier for Beijing to shape the global narrative around the pandemic and deflect criticism of its own initial missteps.”
The saga was expected to continue on Tuesday at the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s governing body. The Day 2 agenda will include a resolution for a review of the global response to the pandemic that is expected to be approved by consensus.