China Wins: Why Trump's WHO Funding Cut is a Gift to Beijing

When he accused the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday of going soft on China over the COVID-19 pandemic and suspended U.S. payments to the agency, President Donald Trump put the strategic question of the century on the table. What’s the best way to win the global competition with Beijing: America First confrontation or multinational cooperation? The fight over the WHO shows why the right answer is a matter of life and death for hundreds of millions of people.

Trump and his allies say that the Geneva-based WHO botched the global pandemic response by praising Beijing’s handling of the crisis, parroting its denial of the COVID-19 threat, and opposing travel restrictions to and from the country. “The WHO willingly took China’s assurances to face value,” Trump said Tuesday as he announced the aid suspension at the White House. “Reliance on China’s disclosures likely caused a 20-fold increase in cases worldwide,” he said.

Read the full article and more in Time Magazine.