The State Department announced a decisive shift away from old-school multilateralism as the administration moves to pull the United States out of dozens of international bodies, a move framed as reclaiming taxpayer dollars and prioritizing national interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s memo and a presidential memorandum by President Donald Trump laid out the case, arguing that many global institutions have become inefficient or counterproductive. This action fits squarely within the America First drive to end what officials call open-ended funding for international bureaucracies. Expect a sharper, more transactional U.S. approach to international engagement going forward.
The State Department explicitly stated the U.S. is “rejecting the outdated model of multilateralism,” and argued that the old system effectively made American taxpayers “the world’s underwriter for a sprawling architecture of global governance.” That blunt language frames the withdrawals as fiscal responsibility as much as policy. From this perspective, continuing membership in certain organizations was no longer defensible to taxpayers or consistent with American priorities.
Administration officials also noted that President Donald Trump’s recent order withdrawing the U.S. from 66 international organizations signaled that “the era of writing blank check to international bureaucracies is over.” That sentence has been repeated inside the administration to underline a break with past practice. The move is presented as trimming waste and focusing U.S. influence where it produces clear results.
Rubio expanded on the argument in a memo posted to the State Department’s Substack, laying out the case for a broad review. “What we term the ‘international system’ is now overrun with hundreds of opaque international organizations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial and ethical governance,” he wrote, describing the landscape as ridden with redundancy and weak oversight. That framing insists the problem is structural and widespread, not limited to a handful of bad actors.
Rubio did not hold back in assessing the institutions themselves. “Even those that once performed useful functions have increasingly become inefficient bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism or instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests. Not only do these institutions not deliver results, they obstruct action by those who wish to address these problems,” Rubio added. Those sentences are central to the administration’s rationale for cuts and withdrawals, casting many organizations as obstacles rather than partners.
The memo went further, arguing U.S. participation at some point crossed a line. Rubio warned that continued engagement “would be an abandonment of our national duty,” and the administration insists this does not equal abdication of global leadership. Instead, officials say the United States will lead selectively and demand accountability, preferring bilateral deals and targeted cooperation over blanket support for large, opaque multilateral bodies.
On Wednesday, the president signed a presidential memorandum directing the U.S. to withdraw from 66 international organizations and instructing executive departments and agencies to cease participation in and funding of entities the administration says no longer serve U.S. interests. That action followed an earlier directive about reviews of U.S. involvement in international bodies. The February 4, 2025 order directed Rubio, along with the U.S. representative to the United Nations, to conduct 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, to determine which organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States.”
Those review findings were compiled and presented to the president, who consulted with his Cabinet before signing the withdrawal memorandum. In the January 2026 memorandum, Trump said Rubio’s findings showed it was “contrary to the interests of the U.S. to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support” to the listed groups. That language forms the legal and political basis for the sweeping pullbacks announced by the administration.
The roster of groups slated for withdrawal spreads across U.N.-affiliated organizations and standalone international forums, including U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and the U.N. Democracy Fund. Non-U.N. entries cited in the administration’s list include the International Solar Alliance and the Global Forum on Migration and Development, among others. Those names illustrate the breadth of the review and the kinds of bodies the administration has targeted for exit.
