Donald Trump blasts WHO for ‘always letting China get the better of the argument’ amid threats to defund it

Donald Trump has hit out at the World Health Organization for ‘always letting China get the better of the argument’ as he hinted at defunding the UN health body. Speaking as he teased an announcement about the WHO next week, the president said: ‘China always seems to get the better of the argument, and I don’t like that. I don’t think that’s appropriate, I don’t think its fair to the American people.

‘I tell that to (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping), I tell that to (WHO director )Dr Tedros (Adhanom). We are going to be talking about that next week in great detail. We want to make sure money is properly spent. Why is the US paying (the WHO) $500m a year, why is china paying, this year $42million dollars. The answer always turns out to be in China’s favor.’

Trump’s criticism of the WHO began after it criticized his decision to ban the majority of travelers from China from entering the US in February. The health body was also criticized by both Trump and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for first issuing a warning to member states about Covid-19 on January 30, even though reports of coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan before Christmas.

The WHO has also been accused of letting China get away with covering up the true scale of the coronavirus outbreak there, with US intelligence sources reporting that the death toll there was over 40,000, rather than the 3,300 deaths officially reported.

But Trump has also been accused of using his criticism of the WHO to deflect from his own mishandling of the outbreak. He did not begin to take the pandemic seriously until mid-March, and initially sough to reassure Americans that Covid-19 would just ‘wash through’ the US by itself while causing minimal damage.