Trump withdraws US from 66 global organizations and treaties in broad pullback

White House announces exits, including from key climate treaty, saying membership was ‘contrary to the interests of the United States’

US President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from a foundational climate treaty as part of a sweeping exit from collective global action, the White House announced Wednesday.

A total of 66 global organizations and treaties — roughly half affiliated with the United Nations — were listed in a White House memorandum as “contrary to the interests of the United States.”

Many of the targets are UN-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor, migration and other issues the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and “woke” initiatives. Other non-UN organizations on the list include the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the Global Counterterrorism Forum.

Most notable among them is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty underpinning all major international climate agreements.

The memo also directs the United States to withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing climate science, alongside other organizations including the International Renewable Energy Agency, UN Oceans and UN Water.

As in his first term, Trump has also withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement and from UNESCO — the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — which Washington had rejoined under Biden.

Trump has likewise pulled the US out of the World Health Organization and sharply reduced foreign aid, slashing funding for numerous UN agencies, including the High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program.

Other prominent bodies named in the memo include the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UN Women, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Trump, who has thrown the full weight of his domestic policy behind fossil fuels, has openly scorned the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, deriding climate science as a “hoax.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the organizations were driven by “progressive ideology” and were actively seeking to “constrain American sovereignty.”

“From DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] mandates to ‘gender equity’ campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project,” he said.

“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” he added.

The UNFCCC was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992 and approved later that year by the US Senate during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

The US Constitution allows presidents to enter treaties “provided two-thirds of Senators present concur,” but it is silent on the process for withdrawing from them — a legal ambiguity that could invite court challenges.

Trump has already withdrawn from the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord since returning to office, just as he did during his first term from 2017 to 2021, in a move later reversed by his successor, Democratic former president Joe Biden.

The administration also previously suspended support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA and the UN Human Rights Council. It has taken a larger, à la carte approach to paying dues to the world body, picking which operations and agencies it believes align with Trump’s agenda and those that no longer serve US interests.

Israel has banned UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and has curtailed its activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, based on what it says are its entrenched ties to terror groups.

“I think what we’re seeing is the crystallization of the US approach to multilateralism, which is ‘my way or the highway,’” said Daniel Forti, head of UN affairs at the International Crisis Group. “It’s a very clear vision of wanting international cooperation on Washington’s own terms.”

It has marked a major shift from how previous administrations — both Republican and Democratic — have dealt with the UN, and it has forced the world body, already undergoing its own internal reckoning, to respond with a series of staffing and program cuts.

Many independent nongovernmental agencies — some that work with the United Nations — have cited many project closures because of the US administration’s decision last year to slash foreign assistance through the US Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Despite the massive shift, Trump administration officials say they see the potential of the UN and want to instead focus taxpayer money on expanding American influence in many of the standard-setting UN initiatives where there is competition with China, like the International Telecommunications Union, the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization.

Speaking before the UN General Assembly in September, Trump delivered a scathing broadside against the body, which was founded in 1945 to promote global peace and cooperation in the wake of World War II.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” asked Trump in a wide-ranging speech, whose litany of complaints extended even to a broken escalator and teleprompter at the UN’s New York headquarters.

Exiting the underlying UN climate treaty could introduce additional legal uncertainty around any future US effort to rejoin.

“Pulling out of the UNFCCC is a whole order of magnitude different from pulling out of the Paris Agreement,” Jean Su, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP.

“It’s our contention that it’s illegal for the President to unilaterally pull out of a treaty that required two thirds of the Senate vote,” she continued. “We are looking at legal options to pursue that line of argument.”

Li Shuo of the Asia Society Policy Institute told AFP, “The US withdrawal from the UN climate framework is a heavy blow to global climate action, fracturing hard-won consensus.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom, an outspoken critic of Trump who is widely seen as a 2028 Democratic presidential contender, said in a statement that “our brainless president  is surrendering America’s leadership  on the world stage and weakening our ability to compete in the economy of the future — creating a leadership vacuum that China is already exploiting.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this article.