Trump ditched the World Health Organization. His new plan will cost three times as much, report says

The Trump administration is reportedly proposing to spend around $2 billion per year replicating the global health capabilities of the World Health Organization, after the U.S. finalized its exit from the UN agency last month.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reportedly driving the effort to build up the U.S. labs, data-sharing networks, and rapid-response systems that it previously had access to as part of the global health agency, unnamed officials told The Washington Post.

The figure is roughly triple the U.S.’s past annual contributions to the WHO, which averaged about $680 million in member dues and voluntary contributions.

The Independent has contacted HHS and the White House for comment.

President Trump has long criticized the agency, moving to leave in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, but that effort was retracted under the Biden administration. When Trump returned to the White House, he restarted the exit, citing, among other issues, “unfairly onerous payments” in a January 2025 executive order announcing his decision.

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The president has also criticized the WHO for missteps during the Covid outbreak, including a slow process to formally declare that the disease was airborne.

Public health experts sharply criticized the administration’s decision to leave the WHO, which America helped found and has often been its largest contributor, arguing the decision would leave the U.S. with less information and global capabilities to monitor and counteract disease, while international efforts to fight polio and improve children’s health would falter.

Dr. Ronald Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said last month the decision was "shortsighted and misguided" and "scientifically reckless,” while public health law expert Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University told the Associated Press the pullback was “the most ruinous presidential decision in my lifetime.”

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The U.S. also owes more than $100 million in dues for the years 2024 and 2025, according to the WHO.

President Trump’s decision to leave the WHO is part of a larger series of moves distancing the U.S. from a variety of multilateral institutions and treaties, many of which America helped establish.

The Republican created a “Board of Peace,” an alternative global diplomatic forum to the UN, and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, while often frustrating NATO allies by threatening to take over Greenland.