International Organizations and “America First”

Multilateralism, incrementalism, and consensus-driven decision making typify the operation and culture of international organizations. Working with and within international organizations requires members to compromise, to collaborate, to agree to disagree, to participate even when outcomes are not considered desirable or optimal, and to allow others to achieve gains that are not shared. In the plenary bodies of organizations, where states of all kinds are treated as equals and the number of states involved means that a plethora of views and perspectives need to be accommodated, results often require patience, negotiation, concessions, and a commitment to consensus. In the smaller and lesser-known councils, committees, and boards, as well, representatives must work together and in good faith if progress is to be made and if problems are to be solved.

These processes do not fit well or comfortably with the unilateralism, impulsiveness, and transactionalism that characterize President Trump’s avowed “America First” foreign policy. That approach leverages U.S. power to maximize what it claims are U.S. interests, to assert U.S. dominance, to belittle opponents and even friends, and to declare and rectify grievances.Footnote ⁷ Its goals, to say the least, are not collective action and playing well with others, at least for their own sake. Between the qualities that make IOs effective and the national self-interestedness that President Trump prioritizes, it is fair to say that international organizations and the U.S. administration are not, in the abstract, natural partners.

It is unsurprising, then, that when IOs fail to support U.S. priorities, the Trump administration treats them, at best, as irrelevancies and inconveniencies and, at worse, as impediments and adversaries. It is also unsurprising that the administration would broadly question the utility of U.S. participation in international organizations given the limits they impose on the unilateral assertion of U.S. power, the substantial financial costs that come with U.S. membership, and the progressive policies (as it sees them) that some IOs have come to promote. The review of U.S. membership in international organizations that was initiated in the administration’s early days aligns well with the president’s instinctive suspicion of IOs (that they are bloated, that they have been politicized, that they take advantage of the United States, and that they provide preferences to China and other U.S. rivals), as well as his related intuition that they need to be disciplined and brought back into line.

President Trump’s predisposition to play hardball, combined with Congress’s unwillingness to serve as any kind of operative check on his actions, foreign or domestic, means that going forward the administration: (1) will not engage in consensus decision making in IOs when it has objections to decisions that incorporate or just reference “left-leaning” policies; (2) will withdraw from organizations that it believes do not provide good value to the United States or that take positions or support programing that are at odds with U.S. foreign policy; (3) will cut funding for IO programs that it does not support or that it wishes instead to lead or undertake itself; (4) will seek to use its financial power to bully organizations to achieve desired U.S. reforms and goals, including significantly reducing the scope of their work and the size of their budgets; and (5) will punish IOs that take actions that do not align with U.S. views and interests. Indeed, this has been the administration’s approach since the beginning of President Trump’s second term.

Refusal to Compromise and Join Consensus

The Trump administration’s deep skepticism of international organizations is reinforced by its equally strong belief that many IOs, as they have evolved, are bastions of leftist ideologies and must, therefore, be brought back to their roots.Footnote ⁸ Michael Waltz, during his confirmation hearing to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reflected this view as he accused the United Nations of “radical politicization” and demanded that the organization “return to the UN Charter’s first principles of preventing and resolving disputes.”Footnote ⁹

In keeping with its domestic agenda, the administration is particularly opposed to a series of policies and objectives related to sustainable development goals (SDGs), climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and gender equality that are, by now, repeated, almost by rote, in the routine decisions and incorporated, as a regular matter, in the planning of many IOs. Starting early in the president’s new term, for documents that refer to these issues, U.S. representatives began calling for votes in meetings across a range of organizations on matters that are typically adopted by consensus.

Some examples:

• In a meeting of the UNICEF executive board, the United States asked for the removal of “language in [country program documents] that promotes gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion.”Footnote ¹⁰ After having called for a vote despite the practice of adopting decisions by consensus, the acting U.S. representative said that the United States “had no other option” but to do so.Footnote ¹¹ “The United States,” he said, “cannot agree to … documents that contain terms and concepts that conflict with U.S. policies as set out in President Trump’s recent Executive Orders [that prohibited funding of DEI programs and the promotion of ‘gender ideology’], especially when those concepts endanger the very mission of the organization…. [C]hildren should be protected from this dangerous ideology and its possible results.”Footnote ¹²

• In a UN General Assembly debate on routine resolutions proclaiming an international day for judicial well-being, an international day of peaceful coexistence, and an international day of hope, as well as a resolution endorsing “education for democracy,” the United States called for recorded votes and repeatedly voted “no.”Footnote ¹³ Regarding the international day of peaceful coexistence, the U.S. representative expressed the U.S. “concern that this resolution is a reaffirmation of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.”Footnote ¹⁴ He continued: “Agenda 2030 and the SDGs advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.”Footnote ¹⁵ He concluded: “the United States rejects and denounces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and it will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course.”Footnote ¹⁶ On the resolution on the international day of hope, the U.S. representative complained that “[t]he current draft resolution … contains references to diversity, equity, and inclusion that conflict with U.S. policies that seek to eliminate all forms of discrimination and create equal opportunities for all.”Footnote ¹⁷

• In a statement to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Council, the U.S. representative “request[ed] that FAO use clear and accurate language in its work and programming that recognizes that women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”Footnote ¹⁸ Rejecting the FAO proposal for institutional renewal,Footnote ¹⁹ the representative went on to state that FAO should not include in its work “DEI programming,” “advance or undertake DEI efforts,” or refer in its work to “climate change” or the SDGs.Footnote ²⁰

• In discussions leading up to the adoption of a declaration by the Commission on the Status of Women,Footnote ²¹ the United States objected to the document’s lack of “precise terminology” when referencing women and girls.Footnote ²² The U.S. representative said that the United States “will no longer promote radical ideologies that replace women with men in spaces and opportunities designed for women. Nor will it devastate families by indoctrinating our sons and daughters to begin wars with their own bodies—or each other.”Footnote ²³ The United States disassociated itself from consensus on the adoption of the declaration.Footnote ²⁴

Similar objections and calls for a vote were raised in meetings large and small, including at the International Civil Aviation Organization,Footnote ²⁵ the UN Commission on Population and Development,Footnote ²⁶ the UN Economic and Social Council’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development,Footnote ²⁷ the UN Environment Programme’s intergovernmental meeting to establish an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution,Footnote ²⁸ and the UN General Assembly’s High-level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases and the Promotion of Mental Health and Well-being.Footnote ²⁹ The results were always lopsided (typically only the United States and another country or two registered opposition), but the evident point of the exercise was not to win, and certainly not to curry favor. It was, instead, to put down a marker concerning the seriousness of the U.S. views and the willingness of the United States to attack policies for addressing global challenges, such as the SDGs, that are globally embraced, and which implementation have become fundamental to IOs like the United Nations. The novelty of the U.S. interventions on these matters (the first Trump administration did not publicly reject the SDGs, for instance, or call for votes on resolutions that referenced them) and their stridency could not be mistaken.

Leveraging U.S. Financial Underwriting of International Organizations

These interventions carried both a message and a threat that were consistent with the president’s early decision to review U.S. participation in international organizations and that were also made clear in U.S. communications with IO officials: that the United States was evaluating carefully the work of organizations to decide whether their activities were deserving of U.S. support and, if not, whether reform was possible or withdrawal necessary.

For some organizations, that decision has already been made. The president announced the United States’ exit from the WHO at the very start of his new term, and the U.S. intention to leave from UNESCO followed six months later. Both departures reprise decisions from the president’s first term, and so they were expected. (Threats to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a theme of the first administration, have not rematerialized, though the president’s commitment to the alliance’s collective security guarantee remains uncertain.)Footnote ³⁰ Consistent with the administration’s message to IOs generally, State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN’s sustainable development goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”Footnote ³¹ Withdrawals, though, have been the exception thus far.

The administration seems to prefer to remake—if it thinks it can—IOs it deems potentially useful. Its preferred tactic is to leverage the United States’ significant financial underwriting of organizations,Footnote ³² cutting contributions with the intent to eliminate particular programs and withholding (or threatening to withhold) other funds to demand changes to IO operations and policies, typically to limit their scope to “their founding missions.”Footnote ³³ The first Trump administration cut funding for the UN Population Fund and UNRWA, and it reduced funding for the UN Program on HIV/AIDS and the WHO (eventually ending all contributions to the latter).Footnote ³⁴ It considered seeking the rescission of $4 billion in foreign aid before dropping the idea following pushback from Congress and the secretaries of state and the treasury.Footnote ³⁵ If it were not for Congress, it would have significantly reduced U.S. contributions to UN peacekeeping.Footnote ³⁶ Altogether, the financial pressure the first Trump administration placed on IOs was not significant, comprehensive, or sustained. Characteristically, the new administration is taking a much more aggressive approach than its predecessor, seeking to dominate and coerce IOs.

The administration began implementing its approach in its first months through major cuts to billions in foreign assistance funding. IOs that received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was designated for elimination, were especially hard hit. Previously approved grants and contributions were cancelled and withdrawn, and payments stopped. Programs relying on these funds had to be shuttered, and many IO employees were laid off.Footnote ³⁷ Individuals who benefited from the work of these programs—migrants, those receiving food and healthcare, and many others—were harmed. Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said that the “brutal funding cuts in the humanitarian sector are putting millions of lives at risk.”Footnote ³⁸

Concurrent with its cutting of foreign assistance funding, the administration also withheld the membership dues that the United States owed many international organizations. A review of U.S. spending since January 2025 shows that the balance in the Contributions to International Organizations account (out of which many dues are paid) has remained unchanged, with the only money spent during FY2025 coming during the final months of the Biden administration.Footnote ³⁹ This created liquidity issues for organizations, including the United Nations, which receives 22 percent of its regular budget and 25 percent of the its peacekeeping budget from the United States.Footnote ⁴⁰ As of May, the United States owed the United Nations $1.5 billion for its regular budget and the same amount for the peacekeeping budget.Footnote ⁴¹

The funds the administration withheld from organizations—both the voluntary contributions that supported many humanitarian programs and the assessed contributions that covered institutional dues—had been congressionally appropriated, and thus the administration was under a legal obligation to spend the money as statutorily directed. First at the end of May, and then again at the end of August, the administration sought—through proposals for the rescission of budget authority—congressional approval for not spending these monies.Footnote ⁴² The first package proposed the rescission of $9.4 billion in State Department and USAID spending, including cutting: more than $200 million that had been appropriated in Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025 for assessed contributions to international organizations like the United Nations and the WHO;Footnote ⁴³ more than $436 million of voluntary contributions to international organizations that would, among other things, eliminate funding for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Montreal Protocol, and the UN Population Fund; and more than $360 million of what had been allocated to cover UN peacekeeping assessments.Footnote ⁴⁴ Billions of dollars of USAID funding for development, disaster assistance, global health, and other initiatives were also set to be slashed, which would effectively constitute ex post congressional authorization for some of the foreign assistance cutbacks that were announced earlier.Footnote ⁴⁵ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) boasted that the rescission would cut “contributions to wasteful, corrupt, and anti-American international organizations.”Footnote ⁴⁶ OMB justified the rescission by claiming that its enactment “would encourage international organizations to be more efficient, down-scope their sprawling missions, and seek contributions from other member nations and donors.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Complete information regarding the programs that would be defunded and what international organizations would lose their U.S. contributions (aside from those specifically noted) was not forthcoming from OMB.Footnote ⁴⁸ Congress approved the rescission request nonetheless, the first action of its kind since 1999.Footnote ⁴⁹

The president’s second rescission package covered an additional $4.9 billion in State Department and USAID appropriations.Footnote ⁵⁰ These monies included half a billion dollars in cuts to U.S. assessed contributions to international organizations for FY2025, including for the United Nations and UNESCO, bringing the total, when combined with the first rescission, to half the budgeted amount for that line for that year.Footnote ⁵¹ They also included nearly $400 billion to be taken from appropriations for U.S. assessed contributions for UN peacekeeping for FY2025, one-third of what had been budgeted when added to what was clawed back previously.Footnote ⁵² And they included as well $2.5 billion for development assistance for FY2024, which when combined with the cuts previously made to FY2025 brought the total for those years to $5.7 billion, nearly seventy-five percent of the $7.8 billion appropriated.Footnote ⁵³ The White House explained its cuts by claiming that “the United Nations …, UN-Affiliated organizations, and various other international organizations … do not support major U.S. policies or priorities or have been operating contrary to American interests for many years” and that UN peacekeeping operations “ha[ve] been fraught with waste and abuse.”Footnote ⁵⁴ One analyst said that the “cuts would shatter UN Peacekeeping’s already precarious financial standing.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Congress did not act on the president’s second rescission request before the appropriations expired with the end of FY2025 on September 30.Footnote ⁵⁶

The president’s FY2026 budget request, issued in May, slashes U.S. funding of international organizations even more severely. The request includes zero funding for the UN regular budget and zero funding for the UN peacekeeping budget.Footnote ⁵⁷ No explanation is provided for the elimination of U.S. contributions to the regular budget or how the administration reconciles the absence of such appropriations with the obligation of members, under the UN Charter, to pay the “expenses of the Organization … as apportioned by the General Assembly” and the possibility, in time, of the United States losing its vote in the General Assembly due to being in arrears.Footnote ⁵⁸ The budget only states, ambiguously, that not funding the UN regular budget is “consistent with” the executive order that called for a review of U.S. membership in all international organizations.Footnote ⁵⁹ The administration ascribes its decision not to request funding for UN peacekeeping operations to the organization’s “wasteful[ness],” its “recent failures,” and the “high level of assessments,” the latter of which has been a concern for many years.Footnote ⁶⁰ Particular issues cited include: allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers; accusations related to narcotics trafficking; the operational inefficacy of certain missions (such as United National Interim Force in Lebanon, which the United States subsequently insisted on shuttering);Footnote ⁶¹ and the disproportionate financial obligations of the United States compared to the other permanent five members of the Security Council.Footnote ⁶²

The budget request eliminates payments of assessed contributions to many other international organizations as well. It asks only for money to pay dues to “support specific international organizations that make America safer and more secure.”Footnote ⁶³ Among those that would no longer receive funding are: FAO; the International Labour Organization; the Organization of American States (OAS); the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; the Pan American Health Organization; UNESCO; the Universal Postal Union; the WHO; the World Intellectual Property Organization; the World Meteorological Organization; and the WTO.Footnote ⁶⁴ Organizations that would have their contributions funded would include, among others: the International Atomic Energy Agency; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the International Civil Aviation Organization; the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons; and international fisheries commissions.Footnote ⁶⁵ Contributions to support international financial institutions (covered in the Treasury Department’s budget) would generally be secure, except for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.Footnote ⁶⁶ Altogether, the budget request would reduce the Contributions to International Organizations account by more than 80 percent (from $1,543,452,000 for FY2025 to $263,803,000 requested for FY2026).Footnote ⁶⁷ The Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities account (which funds UN peacekeeping) would be reduced by 100 percent (from $1,234,144,000 for FY2025 to $0 for FY2026).Footnote ⁶⁸

The administration’s budget request also would cut voluntary contributions to international organizations. These include 100 percent cuts in the Global Health Program account for family planning and reproductive health, as well as for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund.Footnote ⁶⁹ The request eliminates entirely the International Organizations and Programs account, which has funded voluntary contributions to UNDP, UNICEF, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as other UN funds, offices, and programs.Footnote ⁷⁰ It also would zero out funding for the African Development Fund, the Clean Technology Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. Funding for international disaster assistance, migration and refugee assistance, and the Food for Peace program, some of which has gone to organizations including UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program, would be reduced and shifted to new accounts, with the Food for Peace program eliminated.Footnote ⁷¹

Though the request does not seek appropriations to fund U.S. assessed contributions to the United Nations’ regular and peacekeeping budgets, it does propose the creation of a new, nearly $2.9 billion, America First Opportunity Fund out of which the secretary of state could decide to fund those budgets, as well as those of other organizations.Footnote ⁷² The A1OF, as proposed, would thus shift decision making over the funding of international organizations from Congress to the executive branch.

Congress has not yet enacted a 2026 budget. The bill currently before the House of RepresentativesFootnote ⁷³ follows the lead of the White House by not funding U.S. assessed contributions to the UN regular budget, as well as other organizations.Footnote ⁷⁴ It differs, though, by including funds for the OAS and UN peacekeeping operations.Footnote ⁷⁵ The amount for the latter would only cover approximately half of U.S. assessed contributions, however. The House committee report explains that it wishes to “give the Secretary of State discretion to support missions … that are effective and aligned with United States national security interests.”Footnote ⁷⁶ The bill also creates an America First Opportunity Fund, though it does not specify, as they president’s budget does, that monies therein might be used to cover U.S. assessments for international organizations.Footnote ⁷⁷

Starting with the announced cuts to USAID early in the president’s new term, international organizations quickly got the message that they faced immediate and severe reductions in current year fundingFootnote ⁷⁸ and would need to revise down their budgets significantly going forward.Footnote ⁷⁹ UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced the UN80 Initiative in March that promised to “identify[] efficiencies and improvements in the way [the UN] work[s],” “review[] the implementation of all mandates,” and conduct “a strategic review of deeper, more structural changes and programme realignment.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Though Guy Ryder, under-secretary-general for policy and chair of the UN80 Task Force, said that UN80 “is not a cost-cutting, downsizing exercise,” he acknowledged that “we … have to take a look at our budget and our resources in different parts of the system. Organisations have faced some wrenching decisions, and this is happening every day. That’s the reality of our circumstances.”Footnote ⁸¹ Secretary-General Guterres has targeted the UN secretariat for a twenty percent reduction.Footnote ⁸² A greater than half-billion-dollar cut has been proposed for the UN’s 2026 program budget.Footnote ⁸³

New Assumptions

The Trump administration’s severe instrumentalist approach to international organizations was anticipated, as was so much else, by Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. The manifesto recognized a place for international organizations.Footnote ⁸⁴ “Engagement with international organizations is one relatively easy way for the U.S. to defend its interests,” the author acknowledged. But engagement with IOs, she quickly added, “is not the only option.”Footnote ⁸⁵ “The next Administration must end blind support for international organizations,” she instructed.Footnote ⁸⁶ “If an international organization is ineffective or does not support American interests,” the author stated without sentimentality, “the United States should not support it.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Indeed, “[t]hose [organizations] that are effective will still require constant pressure from U.S. officials to ensure that they remain effective.”Footnote ⁸⁸ What is more, “[s]erious consideration should also be given to withdrawal from organizations.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Take them or leave them, was the Project 2025 message: “membership in these organizations must always be understood as a means to attain defined goals rather than an end in itself.”Footnote ⁹⁰ That message explains well the administration’s actions regarding international organizations during its first eight months.

Many IOs, including those with the greatest stature and global impact, came to depend on U.S. funding, through its voluntary and assessed contributions, and other forms of U.S. support. The assumption was that the numerous and varied roles that organizations played in the international system were so critical and embedded, and their usefulness to the United States so apparent, that their position was secure and privileged. The United States never “blindly” supported international organizations, and indeed it pressured and used IOs to achieve its desired ends. But for many decades, IOs were indeed secure and privileged, an integral component of a U.S.-backed international order.Footnote ⁹¹ The Trump administration has no commitment to that order. Instead, it conceptualizes U.S. national interests very narrowly and U.S. relations with IOs as highly contingent, with U.S. support tailored to programs that the administration favors.Footnote ⁹² Organizations, like many other Trump administration targets, foreign and domestic, that are reliant on the U.S. government, are to be dominated and weakened, their dependence weaponized and exploited, so that they become compliant. If organizations refuse to yield, they are to be disciplined (through funding cuts) or punished (through withdrawals, sanctions—like the ICC, or the removal of immunity—like UNRWA). It is not certain exactly how far the Trump administration plans to go in imposing its reform agenda on the United Nations and other IOs, though it is primed to go far. What is apparent, however, is that the assumptions that once held are no longer operative.Footnote ⁹³