White House drops World Trade Organization from list of funding cuts

GENEVA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House has quietly dropped the World Trade Organization from a list of $4.9 billion in foreign aid cuts announced last Friday after the move sparked concern among lawmakers, trade groups and the head of the global trade body.

Democratic lawmakers said the administration's unilateral cuts were illegal because the funding had been authorized by Congress, and trade groups argued cutting funding for the WTO would cede territory to China.

WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that she had been working with the U.S. Trade Representative's office - headed by Jamieson Greer - and others in the Trump administration to resolve the issue.

Friday's announcement noted $29 million in WTO funding as an example of U.S. contributions to international programs that violated President Donald Trump's America First priorities. The administration described the WTO as "toothless."

By Wednesday, the WTO reference was gone from the White House website.

A trade source familiar with the matter said the WTO funding was no longer being cut, but gave no further details.

The White House, USTR and WTO declined to comment.

The cuts announced on Friday are part of a broader push by Trump and his "Make America Great Again" political movement to reduce U.S. spending abroad and focus on domestic priorities. They come after a government-wide review of U.S. participation in international organizations was completed in August, though details have not been released.

Democratic and Republican administrations have been critical of the WTO for years, citing its failure to adjudicate trade conflicts or make progress on standards for global trade.

Trump has upended global trade with high tariffs imposed against nearly every trading partner, and separate bilateral trade deals that trade experts say undermine efforts to set binding multilateral rules for trade.

A senior U.S. official said the WTO reference was removed from the White House website to avoid confusion. The list referred to programs funded in the past, the source said, not line items facing fresh cuts.

The initial announcement of cancelled funding spurred questions from Congress and statements of concern from trade groups such as the National Foreign Trade Council.

The NFTC warned that withdrawing U.S. funding from the WTO would leave a vacuum that other countries would be happy to fill, a nod to China's push for more power on such bodies.

A second source familiar with the matter said the initial reference to WTO came without prior consultation with other agencies, and the fate of the funding remained unclear.

Barring specific instructions, U.S. funding for the WTO could roll over after September 30, given it comes from an account that carries over automatically at the end of the fiscal year, two of the sources said.

The administration also still owes the WTO money for 2024, Reuters reported in March. The Geneva-based trade watchdog had an annual budget of 205 million Swiss francs ($232 million) in 2024, of which Washington was due to contribute about 11%.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva and Andrea Shalal in Washington, additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva and Patricia ZengerleEditing by Colleen Jenkins and Lincoln Feast.)