WHO Withdrawal Act

— 191 — Department of State nations, but it is not the only option—and American diplomats should be clear- eyed about international organizations’ strengths and weaknesses. When such institutions act against U.S. interests, the United States must be prepared to take appropriate steps in response, up to and including withdrawal. The manifest failure and corruption of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of the danger that international organizations pose to U.S. citizens and interests. The next Administration must end blind support for international organi- zations. If an international organization is effective and advances American interests, the United States should support it. If an international organization is ineffective or does not support American interests, the United States should not support it. Those that are effective will still require constant pressure from U.S. officials to ensure that they remain effective. Serious consideration should also be given to withdrawal from organizations that no longer have value, quietly undermine U.S. interests or goals, or disproportionately rely on U.S. financial con- tributions to survive. The Trump Administration’s “tough love” approach to international organiza- tions served American interests. For example, the Trump Administration withdrew from, or terminated funding for, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and the WHO. The results were redeployment of taxpayer dollars to better uses—and other organizations “getting the message” that the United States will not allow itself and its money to be used to undermine its own interests. The Biden Administration reversed many of these decisions. Currently, U.S. funding for international organizations is more than $16 billion in fiscal year 2021—a sharp increase from $10.8 billion in fiscal year 2015.19 Millions of American taxpayer dollars go to support policies and initiatives that hurt the United States and American citizens. The next Administration should direct the Secretary of State to initiate a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of U.S. participation in all international organizations. This review should take into account long-standing provisions in federal law that prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to promote abortion, popu- lation control, and terrorist activities, as well as other applicable restrictions on funding for international organizations and agencies with a view to withholding U.S. funds in cases of abuses. International organizations should not be used to promote radical social pol- icies as if they were human rights priorities. Doing so undermines actual human rights and weakens U.S. credibility abroad. The next Administration should use its voice, influence, votes, and funding in international organizations to pro- mote authentic human rights and respect for sovereignty based on the binding — 192 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise international obligations contained in treaties that have been constitutionally ratified by the U.S. government. It must promote a strict text-based interpreta- tion of treaty obligations that does not consider human rights treaties as “living instruments” both within the State Department and within international organi- zations that receive U.S. funding, including by making respect for sovereignty and authentic human rights a litmus test of personnel decisions and elections processes within international organizations. The U.S. Commission on Unalienable Human Rights focused on the primacy of civil and political rights in its inaugural report, which remains an important guidepost for bilateral and multilateral engagements on human rights. The com- mission’s report is a roadmap for revamping and reenergizing U.S. human rights policy and should be the basis for both structural and policy changes throughout the State Department.20 All U.S. multilateral engagements must be reevaluated in light of the work of the commission, and initiatives that promote controversial policies must be halted and rolled back. It is paramount to create a healthy culture of respect for life, the family, sover- eignty, and authentic human rights in international organizations and agencies. To support this goal, the U.S. led an effort during the Trump Administration to forge a consensus among like-minded countries in support of human life, women’s health, support of the family as the basic unit of human society, and defense of national sovereignty. The result was the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Women’s Health and Protection of the Family.21 All U.S. foreign policy engagements that were pro- duced and expanded under the Obama and Biden Administrations must be aligned with the Geneva Consensus Declaration and the work of the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Human Rights. The U.S. government should not and cannot promote or fund abortion in inter- national programs or multilateral organizations. Technically, the United States can prevent its international funding from going toward abortions, but the U.S. will have a greater impact by including like-minded nations and building on the coali- tion launched through the Geneva Consensus Declaration, with a view to shaping the work of international agencies by functioning as a united front. The COVID-19 pandemic made it painfully clear that both international organi- zations—and some countries—are only too willing to trample human rights in the name of public health. For example, the WHO was, and remains, willing to support the suppression of basic human rights, partially because of its close relationship with human rights abusers like the PRC. The next Administration should unequivocally embrace the premise that humanity and the international community can simultaneously tackle pandem- ics and other emergent health threats without impeding the rights of people. It must also become a vocal surrogate for people in countries where rights are being suppressed in the name of health. This will likely require greater restrictions on

— 802 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise response to four rounds of tariffs plus an attempted Phase One agreement. The Biden Administration has left the tariffs in place and is expanding them to pursue progressive policy goals. The first order of business for a new Administration that is focused on American workers and consumers is to repeal all tariffs enacted under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 196251 and Sections 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.52 The President can do this unilaterally, and Congress can do it through legislation. The second order of business requires Congress to pass legislation repealing Sections 232, 201, and 301. The U.S. Constitution places all taxing authority with Congress53 and none with the President. Congress used those provisions of law to delegate some of its taxing authority to the President because it was having trouble passing “clean” tariff legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. Unless and until this constitutional question about delegation is addressed, important reforms are available to the next Congress and the next President. Congress faced a problem of collective action in the 1960s and 1970s. As a whole, Members generally wanted to lower tariffs, but few individual Members were will- ing to remove tariffs that benefited special interests in their districts. Trade bills were invariably watered down through amendments and logrolling. The thinking was that the President, whose constituency is the entire nation, would be less prone to special-interest pleading than Members of Congress would be, so Congress del- egated some of its tariff-making authority to the President in 1962 and 1974 trade legislation. Delegating tariff-making might have worked in the short run, but in the long run, it was both constitutionally dubious and ripe for abuse. That came to pass in 2018. The Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, invoked in 2018 against Canada, Europe, and other allies on national security grounds, raised car prices by an aver- age of $250 per vehicle and gave America the world’s highest steel prices. They also harmed the construction, canned food and beverage, and other metal-us- ing industries. While this may have benefited the steel industry itself, each steel job saved cost an average of $650,000 per year that had been taken from elsewhere in the econo- my.54 That is no way to strengthen American manufacturing. The New York Federal Reserve estimated in 2019 that the Section 301 China tariffs cost the average house- hold $831 per year,55 a figure that has likely increased with inflation. The new tariffs have a clear record of failure—as conservative economists almost unanimously warned would be the case. Job number one for the next Administration is to return to sensible trade policies and eliminate the destruc- tive Trump–Biden tariffs. Strengthening American Manufacturing. The decline of American manu- facturing is a common political trope in both parties, typically invoked before a call for more government intervention. This narrative has several problems. One is that — 803 — Trade American manufacturing output is currently at an all-time high. The record was not set during World War II and not during the 1950s boom. Output did not peak when manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 or during the Reagan economic revival in the 1980s. It is actually higher now than it has ever been. American manufacturing is buoyant because each manufacturing worker’s pro- ductivity is also at an all-time high. The key to prosperity is doing more with less. The next President should ignore special interests and populist ideologues who want government to do the opposite through industrial policy, trade protectionism, and other failed progressive policies. It takes surprisingly few people to achieve America’s record-high manufac- turing output—currently about 13 million people out of a workforce of more than 160 million, compared to the 1979 peak of 19.5 million people out of a workforce of 104 million.56 Productivity growth has freed the time and talents of millions of people for other, additional uses. The belief that manufacturing has to shrink for services to grow is the zero- sum fallacy against which sensible economists often warn. It is anathema to the optimism, hope, and confidence that are the natural birthright of conservatives. Growing productivity enables more output of both manufacturing and services. That is why America continues to have sustained booms and record-setting real GDP despite the long-run decline in manufacturing employment. Economists distinguish between two types of growth: extensive and intensive. Extensive growth is the Soviet and Chinese model for manufacturing: If you have more people use more resources, they will create more output. Extensive growth is doing more with more; intensive growth is doing more with less. That is where America’s superpower lies. The story of American manufacturing is one of intensive growth dating back to our agricultural origins. Conservative leaders should draw on this history to position America for continued success. With intensive growth, it is not manufacturing or services; it is manufacturing and services. Retaliatory Tariffs. Raising tariffs on another country almost always invites retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. The latter tend to be directed at politically sen- sitive American exports. Retaliatory tariffs by both China and American allies in response to the 2018 steel tariffs were targeted primarily at American agriculture. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, those tariffs cost farmers $27 billion with losses concentrated particularly in heartland states.57 Retaliatory tariffs also targeted U.S. industries that were not protected by tar- iffs. Many imports become inputs into U.S. manufacturing. The motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson was already facing higher production costs as domestic steel producers raised their prices to accommodate the new steel tariff. A retaliatory tariff on its motorcycles imposed by the European Union further raised its prices and hurt its export business. Harm to such innocent bystanders was another unin- tended (though foreseen) consequence.

— 7 — Foreword Instead, party leaders negotiate one multitrillion-dollar spending bill—several thousand pages long—and then vote on it before anyone, literally, has had a chance to read it. Debate time is restricted. Amendments are prohibited. And all of this is backed up against a midnight deadline when the previous “omnibus” spending bill will run out and the federal government “shuts down.” This process is not designed to empower 330 million American citizens and their elected representatives, but rather to empower the party elites secretly nego- tiating without any public scrutiny or oversight. In the end, congressional leaders’ behavior and incentives here are no differ- ent from those of global elites insulating policy decisions—over the climate, trade, public health, you name it—from the sovereignty of national electorates. Public scrutiny and democratic accountability make life harder for policymakers—so they skirt it. It’s not dysfunction; it’s corruption. And despite its gaudy price tag, the federal budget is not even close to the worst example of this corruption. That distinction belongs to the “Administrative State,” the dismantling of which must a top priority for the next conservative President. The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress. This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people. In recent decades, members of the House and Senate discovered that if they give away that power to the Article II branch of government, they can also deny responsi- bility for its actions. So today in Washington, most policy is no longer set by Congress at all, but by the Administrative State. Given the choice between being powerful but vulnerable or irrelevant but famous, most Members of Congress have chosen the latter. Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year. l A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes; — 8 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security, following the lead of a feckless Administration, order border and immigration enforcement agencies to help migrants criminally enter our country with impunity; l Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms; l Bureaucrats at the Department of Justice force school districts to undermine girls’ sports and parents’ rights to satisfy transgender extremists; l Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training” seminars about “white privilege”; and l Bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about “intersectionality” and abortion.3 Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress. Colleges and school districts are funded by tax dollars. The Administrative State holds 100 percent of its power at the sufferance of Congress, and its insulation from presidential discipline is an unconstitutional fairy tale spun by the Washington Establishment to protect its turf. Members of Congress shield themselves from constitutional accountability often when the White House allows them to get away with it. Cultural institutions like public libraries and public health agencies are only as “independent” from public accountability as elected officials and voters permit. Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current Administration come from one place: the Oval Office. The President cannot hide behind the agencies; as his many executive orders make clear, his is the respon- sibility for the regulations that threaten American communities, schools, and families. A conservative President must move swiftly to do away with these vast abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it. Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and pol- icymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State.