Trump Administration Moves to Replace the WHO
And with it, China's influence
The Trump administration is preparing to spend up to $2 billion a year to build a U.S.-led alternative to the World Health Organization (WHO), according to The Washington Post.
The United States formally exited the WHO on January 22, 2026, following an executive order President Donald Trump signed just hours after being sworn in last year. The order directed federal agencies to cut funding, recall American personnel and find alternatives for coordinating international health efforts.
That initiative is now taking shape as the administration aims to recreate many of the WHO’s core functions — from disease surveillance to outbreak response — under direct U.S. leadership.
The plan would significantly expand the global footprint of agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Those agencies already operate in 63 countries. Under the new proposal, that number could grow to more than 130 through bilateral agreements and expanded on-the-ground operations.
The goal, officials say, is to rebuild laboratory networks, data-sharing systems and rapid-response infrastructure that were left behind when the U.S. withdrew from the WHO and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
During a recent briefing, a senior HHS official pushed back on the idea that the U.S. is retreating from the world stage.
“I just want to stress the point that we are not withdrawing from being a leader on global health,” the official said, according to WaPo.
The effort has been building for months. In May 2025, senior health officials from the U.S. and Argentina announced plans to create what they described as an “alternative international health system.” It remains unclear what role Argentina will ultimately play.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been one of the WHO’s sharpest critics. In a video address last year, he argued that although the United States historically provided the largest share of the organization’s funding, it was China that used the organization to wield disproportionate influence.
In 2006, China pressured the World Health Assembly to appoint Chinese national Dr. Margaret Chan as director-general. Over her two terms, the WHO steadily evolved into a political instrument aligned with Beijing’s interests.
Chan was succeeded in 2017 by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, another CCP-backed figure. Like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Tedros is a Marxist who committed human rights abuses in his native Ethiopia—both as a high-ranking terrorist and as the country’s health officer. Tedros has used the WHO to advance Chinese priorities. Under Tedros, the WHO downplayed early evidence of human-to-human transmission and promoted narratives about the virus’s origins that shielded China from accountability.
But the WHO’s totalitarian impulses were not confined to COVID-19.
In a recent article, the WHO openly called for governments to use AI technology to crack down on opposition to vaccines. The organization praised “AI-driven infodemic monitoring systems” such as VaccineLies and CoVaxLies — tools developed during COVID-19 to track vaccine-related misinformation online and enable what it called “proactive countermeasures.”
Those systems monitor social media posts that question vaccine policy, classify certain claims as misinformation or disinformation, and track how those claims spread. Governments and technology platforms used such systems during the pandemic to censor content that challenged the government narrative.
The WHO also recommends using “trusted messengers” — local leaders, healthcare workers and community figures — to reinforce public health guidance, and urges governments to align their messaging with its six communication principles, ensuring information is “Accessible, Actionable, Credible, Relevant, Timely, and Understandable.”
Whether other nations will break from the WHO remains an open question. The organization’s power lies not only in funding, but in the trust and authority it holds among governments. Replacing that influence — even with $2 billion a year — may prove to be the administration’s biggest challenge.