On January 7, President Trump issued a memorandum, “Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States.”  The memorandum lists 66 entities for withdrawal, many of which are connected to the United Nations.

This is another dramatic signal from the Trump Administration. It shows scorn for the global commons and disdain for the United Nations. The symbolic impact is obvious and vicious. The practical impact is harder to measure, especially since the Trump Administration was already disengaging from at least some of these entities.

In what follows, I offer some thoughts about what entities are covered, about what withdrawal might look like in practice, and about how this memorandum fits with the Trump Administration’s broader approach to foreign affairs.

Background

In February 2025, President Trump issued an order calling for “a review of all international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member and provides any type of funding or other support, and all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party.” The Secretary of States was to conduct this astonishingly sweeping review in six months and then to “provide recommendations as to whether the United States should withdraw from any such organizations, conventions, or treaties.” This review was in addition to actions that the Trump Administration took in 2025 to pursue withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, and UNRWA.

The January 7 memo is the result of this review. More accurately, it is the first result of this review – the memo itself notes that Trump’s “review of further findings of the Secretary of State remains ongoing.”

Contents of the Memo

The memo calls for withdrawal from 66 entities. The first 35 entities are listed as free-standing entities, while the next 31 are identified as “United Nations Organizations.”

So who are these entities?

First, there are some big names on this list. The most significant is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – to which all other countries in the world belong and which the United States joined in 1992 after the Senate gave its advice and consent during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Other names that jumped out at me included the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Law Commission, and various UN bodies like the UN Population Fund.

Second, the list includes many far more obscure names. I expect that every reader will recognize some names, but few if any readers will recognize them all. (I didn’t.) Many of the entities on the first half of the list are small-scale operations, such as the Colombo Plan Council or the International Cotton Advisory Committee. The entities on the second half of the list – the UN portion – vary widely in their size and prominence. In other words, while the number “66” is striking, it is important to remember that it encompasses a wide range of entities.

Third, the title of the memo is misleading. (This should not surprise observers of the Trump Administration.) While it refers to withdrawal from “organizations, conventions, and treaties,” the majority of listed entities are not in fact organizations, conventions, or treaties. The first half of the list includes many informal groups, such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum (“an informal, apolitical, multilateral … platform”). And most of the entities on the UN part of the list are not free-standing organizations but rather actors within the United Nations, such as the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict, or UN Energy. There are certainly some organizations, conventions, or treaties on the list, including the UNFCCC, but they are in the minority.

Fourth, there are some common subject matter themes among the listed entities. A State Department Press Release referenced “DEI mandates … ‘gender equity’ campaigns’ [and] … climate orthodoxy.”  Many of the targeted entities focus on climate or other environmental issues, and some do focus on gender and equity. Others focus on development, commodities, education, scientific research, democracy, fair elections, peace, and the rule of law.

Neither the memo nor the accompanying press releases give particularized reasons for what the United States objects to about the individual entities. Instead, we simply have a general statement that these entities are “redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity.”

Next Steps in Law and Practice

President Trump’s memo is not itself a formal act of withdrawal. Rather, it is an instruction to the State Department and other agencies to pursue withdrawal.

What exactly withdrawal will look like will vary across the entities.

For the first half of the list, the United States will presumably communicate to each entity  its intentions to withdraw; will withdraw as soon as it can do so as a matter of international law (immediately for some entities and following a waiting period for others); and will do everything it can to minimize participation and funding in the interim. For a few of these entities, U.S. withdrawal may raise additional questions (such as whether the United States will continue to recognize privileges and immunities for the Washington-based International Cotton Advisory Committee).

For the UN-focused half of the list, the picture is more complex. The memo states that “For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law.” The United States is not withdrawing from the United Nations, and it does not have separate membership in most of the entities listed. It can presumably choose not to show up at the meetings of these entities – and indeed it may already not be participating much in the workings of some of these entities. But cutting off funding is a different matter. The United States can cease to make voluntary contributions (and indeed had already done so for some of the listed entities). But it is required as a matter of international law to pay regular dues to the United Nations. It should not be able to pick and choose how to dole out its regular dues within the organization. As a Spokesperson for the Secretary-General observed, “all Member States, including the United States” have a legal obligation under the U.N. Charter for their assessed contributions.

That the United States will continue to have funding obligations unfortunately does not mean that it will necessarily meet them in practice. The United States is currently far behind on its UN dues. and the Trump Administration has proved all too willing in many contexts to ignore its funding obligations.

Finally, the UNFCCC is a special case. I assume that the United States intends to formally withdraw from it (although the memo listed it as one of the “United Nations entities” for which “withdrawal means ceasing participation”). As a matter of international law, the United States can do so under the one-year withdrawal clause in Article 25 of the UNFCCC. As a matter of U.S. domestic law, the President’s authority to unilaterally withdraw the United States from a treaty to which the U.S. Senate gave advice and consent is not fully settled. But such withdrawals happen in practice, and I expect it will be realized here. Pursuant to Article 20 of the Paris Agreement (from which the United States is separately in the process of withdrawing) a future President who wished to rejoin the Paris Agreement would first need to rejoin the UNFCCC. As a matter of U.S. domestic law, there are several possible pathways for rejoining the UNFCCC. I have argued at length elsewhere that one untested but feasible way would be for the President to simply re-use the 1992 Senate resolution of advice and consent, which remains on the books.

The Memo in Context

The January 7 memo is fully consistent with other actions of the second Trump Administration. It follows on the earlier withdrawals, the destruction of USAID, climate denialism, many refusals to meet funding obligations, and a National Security Strategy that drips with disdain for international organizations. It came the same day that President Trump gave an interview to the New York Times in which he expressed considerable skepticism about international law – and only a few days after the raid in Venezuela that seized Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores in violation of international law.  And while it is tempting to say that the second Trump Administration is a total aberration, the Republican Party has long played home to skeptics about the value of international organizations and international law. (Remember John Bolton’s infamous line that “if the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”)

I also expect, with sorrow, that the January 7 memo will not be the last instance of the Trump Administration’s disengagement from multilateralism, from the international legal system, and from efforts to solve common problems and promote humane values. We have three more years of the Trump Administration to go. I can hardly bear to think about what may lie ahead.

In my view, a later President will be able to rejoin each of the entities listed in the January 7 memo, unless these entities disappear in the meantime. But that will not be nearly enough to undo the damage. A new administration will also need to come up with a way of credibly ensuring that the United States can become a more reliable long-term partner – and one that will address the problems of the global commons. That will be a very hard task. Its starting point is probably not international but rather domestic, such as structural reforms that lead to a less partisan and more engaged Congress. For “[w]ith all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.”  So wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in a famous 1952 opinion  –  and it remains true today.