OPINION:
The United Nations is not exactly known for its thrifty ways. Despite facing periodic pressure to reduce its budget, the world body spends trillions of dollars annually, and much of that funding comes from the United States. Thanks to President Trump, that’s about to change.
Almost lost amid the flurry of executive orders Mr. Trump has signed since Inauguration Day is one calling for a review of all “international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member.” As the title of Mr. Trump’s order makes clear, withdrawing from these organizations is very much on the table.
The United Nations is on notice, so its leadership recently told all its departments to prepare a list of budget cuts.
“Your objective is to identify as many functions as possible that could be relocated to existing lower-cost locations,” reads an April 25 memo from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “or otherwise reduced or abolished if they are duplicative or no longer viable.”
They may dislike Mr. Trump at Turtle Bay, but they know he means business. They’re not waiting for the budget ax to fall, primarily when that ax rests in the hands of their most generous benefactor: the United States.
How generous? As U.N. expert Brett Schaefer notes in a recent study from the American Enterprise Institute, the U.S. alone supplies nearly 28% of all government contributions to the U.N. system.
To understand how much money we’re talking about, consider the two main types of U.N. funding: “assessed” and “voluntary” contributions.
The assessed funds are mandatory, which is what you might call the membership dues a nation must pay. They make up the central operating U.N. budget. The voluntary funds go to humanitarian groups such as the World Food Program.
Let’s compare U.S. contributions to the U.N. budget with those of another country. Sweden, which ranks among the top 10 most generous countries, gave more than $121 million in assessed funds and $806 million in voluntary funds in 2023, adding to less than $1 billion.
Not bad. It’s a lot more than what dozens of other countries give.
Consider what the United States gave the United Nations that year: more than $3.1 billion in assessed funds and more than $9.7 billion in voluntary funds, for nearly $13 billion.
You can see why the U.N. leadership is alarmed by Mr. Trump’s executive order. Withdrawing the funding of almost any other nation would be fine, as would the U.N. system. Subtracting what the U.S. contributes would cause the system to collapse.
In other words, the U.S. has considerable leverage if it’s willing to use it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case four years after Mr. Trump finished his first term. Under President Biden, Mr. Schaefer said, “the U.S. made little effort to arrest U.N. budget growth” or to even determine whether we were getting any real value for our money.
Those days are behind us now. To say there’s a new sheriff in town is an understatement. Mr. Trump is all about using leverage. If he is willing to slash whole departments and agencies in the U.S. government, you can imagine how he feels about shoveling money at the United Nations.
It’s not even primarily a question of whether we’re getting our money’s worth. That’s a big concern, of course, and a serious one. However, the problem goes deeper than that, which Mr. Trump’s executive order acknowledges. The order withdrew the U.S. from participating in and supporting the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees for being, yes, ineffective, but also for being anti-Israel and pro-terrorist.
In short, Mr. Trump’s order to review U.N. funding is long overdue. Mr. Schaefer recommends that the president also consider other steps. Among them:
• Freeze all U.S. payments to international organizations pending the outcome of the review.
• Prohibit U.S. funding for any group from which the U.S. has withdrawn, such as the U.N. Convention on Climate Change.
• Shift the funds withheld from organizations that don’t uphold American interests to those that do.
We expect lawmakers to be responsible stewards of the people’s money. That task doesn’t end at the nation’s borders. We deserve efficiency and effectiveness in domestic programs and in what we spend on global relief, peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.
Mr. Trump may be unable to “make the U.N. great again,” but he can use America’s sizable clout to make it work better and for less money. Call it the great U.N.-doing.
• Ed Feulner is the founder of The Heritage Foundation.
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