Donald Trump Cuts UN Funding as Organization Launches UN80 Reforms
President Donald Trump canceled U.S. contributions to the United Nations, triggering a financial crisis and a massive structural downsizing effort led by Secretary-General António Guterres.
The United Nations entered its 80th anniversary in October 2025 facing a severe financial crisis after Donald Trump announced the cancellation of the United States' annual contributions. The U.S. government has withheld nearly all obligatory funding, including over $2 billion in institutional and peacekeeping costs, which represents approximately 25% of the organization's budget.
During his address at the 80th General Assembly in New York, Trump criticized the UN's inability to resolve global conflicts and stated that he had ended seven wars that the organization failed to address. In response to the funding vacuum, Secretary-General António Guterres launched the UN80 initiative to modernize the Security Council and downsize the organization's bureaucracy.
The reform plan includes a 20% reduction in the UN secretariat's size by 2026 and the relocation of staff from New York and Geneva to lower-cost centers such as Nairobi. Guterres also proposed reviewing 40,000 mandates to eliminate redundancies. The financial strain has already impacted global operations, with the 2025 target for assisted people dropping from 180 million to 114 million and causing the closure of health centers and water facilities in Afghanistan.
Institutional instability has led some leaders, including Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to suggest relocating the UN headquarters outside the United States. Meanwhile, the process to select the next Secretary-General began in September 2025, with candidates emerging from the Latin American group.
