Two questions sit at the center of Washington’s latest move to shrink America’s multilateral footprint: What exactly are we leaving?  And does quitting reduce the bill for U.S. taxpayers—or rearrange it?

On 7 January 2026, the White House directed agencies to withdraw from 66 international organizations to cut costs and reduce taxpayer funding, with savings contingent on legal and budget constraints.

“The headline is ‘66 exits.’ The fine print is ‘as permitted by Law’—and that’s where savings are won or lost.”

What’s being cut isn’t one program—it’s an ecosystem

In policy terms, this isn’t a single treaty or a single agency.  It’s a cross-section of the modern international “stack”: climate science panels, energy compacts, democracy and rule‑of‑Law forums, UN coordination offices, regional commissions, and specialized policy networks.

The administration’s stated logic is straightforward: too many bodies doing similar work, too little accountability, and too many U.S. dollars routed into institutions that don’t align with national priorities.  This targeted approach aims to make U.S. engagement more effective, which should resonate with the audience’s interest in strategic resource use.

Where the redundancies show up (and why “66” doesn’t equal “66 separate budgets”)

The administration’s critique centers on overlap—multiple entities covering similar subject matter, often with different branding, governance, and reporting lines.  But the most critical budget reality is this:

Do U.S. taxpayers support these?

Yes—through a mix of assessed (mandatory) contributions, voluntary contributions, and agency participation costs.

Here’s the key distinction:

• Assessed contributions are legally obligated dues for UN membership and certain UN activities.  CRS notes the U.N. Charter requires members to contribute, and assessed contributions fund core UN operations and peacekeeping.
• Voluntary contributions are discretionary—often the first dollars cut when administrations want fast savings.

The State Department also publishes annual reports on U.S. financial contributions to international organizations, showing that taxpayer funds flow through formal channels rather than through “soft” participation. 

How much will we save by canceling them?

The honest answer: The memorandum does not specify a total savings figure, and the major reporting noted that the administration did not provide a dollar figure for the withdrawals.

The practical answer: Savings depend on what kind of money each exit touches

·         If the U.S. is ending voluntary contributions, savings can be relatively direct—Congress appropriates, agencies obligate, and payments stop.

·         If the U.S. is walking away from entities embedded in assessed budgets, the math is more complex: you may stop participation and attempt to stop payments, but the underlying dues mechanisms don’t automatically shrink—especially for U.N.-system line items tied to membership obligations.

·         If the withdrawal requires legislative action, near-term “savings” may be delayed, partial, or offset by arrears and compliance constraints.

To understand scale, note that the United States’ assessed share of the UN regular budget is 22%, set via UN assessment resolutions.  (That percentage is about the UN system broadly—not a clean proxy for the 31 UN entities on this list.)

“Quitting a forum is easy; shrinking an assessed budget is structural.”

“Chipping away” at waste, fraud, and abuse—what the exit strategy signals

The administration frames this as a step-by-step assault on inefficiency: eliminate bodies deemed duplicative, ideological, or low-return, and redeploy resources to domestic or priority security needs.

But the list itself indicates a preference for bilateral control and selective multilateral engagement over broad treaty-based participation—especially in climate, migration, and identity-related programming.

That posture may generate savings where spending is discretionary.  Yet in the UN system—where assessed contributions, arrears, and budget votes intertwine—the fiscal benefit may arrive slowly and indirectly, if at all, unless the U.S. also changes how it funds the larger assessed accounts.

Below is the best available cost ranking of the 66 bodies, based on the most recent comprehensive, official dataset that itemizes U.S. payments/obligations by recipient: the State Department’s FY2023 “U.S. Contributions to International Organizations” Annex (published 3 December 2024).

Important scope note (so the ranking is honest):

The FY2023 annex reports U.S. “obligations” by recipient entity—which can include membership dues (assessed) and voluntary/earmarked program funding routed to that entity.

Many of the 66 items in the White House memorandum are UN sub-entities/offices/coordination bodies that do not appear as standalone recipients in the annex; their costs are typically embedded within broader UN funding lines (e.g., “United Nations”).

Therefore, for those entities, an exact dollar ranking cannot be derived from the official annex without an allocation model that the government does not provide.

A) Ranked list (highest → lowest) where FY2023 U.S. obligations are explicitly itemized

Method: FY2023 obligations per recipient as shown in the State Department FY2023 annex. 

1.       UN Population Fund (UNFPA) — $200,920,726.85

2.       Science and Technology Center Ukraine (= “Science and Technology Center in Ukraine” on the memo list) — $26,697,493.00

3.       International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — $23,018,131.70

4.  UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) — $17,945,229.60

5.       International Development Law Organization (IDLO) — $17,136,843.01

6.       International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) — $16,859,394.00

7.       Colombo Plan Council (listed in annex as “Colombo Plan Council for Technical Cooperation”) — $13,157,073.76

8.  UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — $12,025,000.00

9.  UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) — $10,138,405.70

10.  UN Peacebuilding Fund — $1,000,000.00 [

11.   International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) (listed as “International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property”) — $918,637.65 

12.   International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) — $895,596.00

13.  UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) — $800,242.00 [

14.  UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) — $383,424.42

15.   Pan American Institute of Geography and History — $323,935.00

16.   Commission for Environmental Cooperation — $3,050,000.00

17.   International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) — $4,206,047.00

18.   International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law — $2,370,370.00

19.   Inter‑American Institute for Global Change Research — $1,810,403.00

20.   Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) — $200,000.00

21.   International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies — $70,000.00 [

22.   Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) — $50,000.00

23.   International Lead and Zinc Study Group — $31,902.17 [

24.   Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories — $31,607.10

✅ These 24 are the only ones from the “66 list” that appear as explicit recipients with dollar amounts in the FY2023 annex text we retrieved.

B) The remaining bodies (no standalone FY2023 dollar line in the annex) — cannot be precisely ranked from official data

For the following 42 entities, the FY2023 annex (as retrieved) does not show a direct recipient line with an obligation amount.
That typically means one of three things:

Embedded within a broader recipient (often “United Nations” or another umbrella entity),

• No U.S. obligations recorded in FY2023 (or below reporting/collection thresholds for that annex),
• Funded through indirect channels, not captured as a direct “recipient entity” line item.

Non-U.N. organizations (11 not itemized here)

• 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact
• Education Cannot Wait
• European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats
• Freedom Online Coalition
• Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund
• Global Counterterrorism Forum
• Global Forum on Cyber Expertise
• Global Forum on Migration and Development
• Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals, and Sustainable Development
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Intergovernmental Science‑Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
• International Cotton Advisory Committee
• International Energy Forum
• International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)
• International Solar Alliance
• Pan American Institute of Geography and History (itemized above) ✅
• Partnerships for Atlantic Cooperation
• Regional Cooperation Council
• Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21)
• Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (itemized above) ✅
• Venice Commission of the Council of Europe

UN organizations/offices (31 total; only some itemized above)

Not itemized as standalone recipients in the retrieved FY2023 annex text:

• Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)
• ECOSOC – ECA
• ECOSOC – ECLAC
• ECOSOC – ESCAP
• ECOSOC – ESCWA
• International Law Commission
• International Trade Centre (ITC)
• Office of the Special Adviser on Africa
• OSRSG Children in Armed Conflict
• OSRSG Sexual Violence in Conflict
• OSRSG Violence Against Children
• Peacebuilding Commission
• Permanent Forum on People of African Descent
• UN Alliance of Civilizations
• UN‑REDD Programme
• UN Democracy Fund
• UN Energy
• UN Oceans
• UN Register of Conventional Arms
• UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination
• UN System Staff College
• UN Water
• UN University

(And again: UNFPA, UNFCCC, UN-Habitat, UNITAR, UNCTAD, UN Women, IRMCT, Peacebuilding Fund are itemized above.)

Why can many UN items not be individually “ranked” from public payment tables

The presidential memo lists numerous UN offices and system bodies.

But the State Department contribution annex reports by recipient entity (e.g., “United Nations,” “UNFPA,” “UNFCCC”), and many sub-entities are part of the broader UN Secretariat/regular budget structure rather than distinct recipients.

For example, the annex includes a large “United Nations” line item ($1,041,592,783.41 in FY2023).  Still, the memo’s internal offices (DESA, ECOSOC commissions, etc.) aren’t individually broken out under that line in the annex. 

Many of the listed UN “entities” are not standalone membership dues.  They are offices, programs, or coordinating bodies inside the UN system—meaning costs are often embedded in larger assessed budgets.  This complexity is key to helping my readers understand the true scope of potential savings.