Trump’s Withdrawal From 66 Organizations – OpEd |
When the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from, and defunding of, 66 international organizations and treaty bodies on January 7th, much of the media coverage framed the move as reckless isolationism or short-term budget cutting. That framing misunderstands what is actually happening.
This is not primarily a cost-saving exercise. It is a deliberate strategic break from a model of global governance that increasingly perpetuates problems rather than resolving them, and that relies on the continuous expansion of mandates, budgets, and crises to justify its own existence.
Money matters here, but only insofar as it reveals intent.
Using the most recent consolidated US government contribution tables, a conservative reading shows that the United States was spending at least $90 million per year on a subset of the 66 organizations now being exited. That figure is a lower bound, based only on clearly identifiable FY2023 obligations tied to a handful of the largest recipients.
Among the biggest recipients of recent US funding on the withdrawal list were the United Nations Population Fund, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN Women, and UN-Habitat. Together, just these four entities account for the bulk of the identifiable spending in the conservative estimate above, with the population fund alone receiving tens of millions of dollars annually from the United States.
Climate-related bodies illustrate particularly clearly what Washington is stepping away from. US funding for the UNFCCC secretariat and associated........