Trump to Pull U.S. From WHO, Roll Back Special Policies for Hong Kong

The moves, which were partly a response to Beijing’s actions on Hong Kong, are likely to further escalate tensions between the U.S. and China as the two nations trade barbs over their handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Trump broadly alleged a “pattern of misconduct” by China on trade, intellectual property, its coronavirus response and its legal moves on Hong Kong.

“China claims it is protecting national security, but the truth is that Hong Kong was secure and prosperous as a free society. Beijing’s decision reverses all of that,” Mr. Trump said.

“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” said Mr. Trump, referring to the pandemic that first emerged in December in Wuhan, China, and accusing Chinese authorities of not giving the international community complete and timely warnings about the pathogen’s potential to spread.

The president was surrounded by his top economic and national security advisers. He declined to elaborate on his announcements and didn’t take questions from reporters.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said earlier this week that “Hong Kong affairs are China’s internal affairs” and that it would “allow no external interference.” The embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Trump’s policy announcements.

Mr. Trump said the U.S. would “take necessary steps” to sanction those responsible for ending Hong Kong’s partial autonomy, following Beijing’s vote Thursday designed to crush long-running protests that have challenged Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Sanctions against Chinese officials and agencies would mark the U.S.’s first use of such tools over Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the State Department had officially determined Hong Kong is no longer sufficiently autonomous from China because of Beijing’s tightening grip on the territory. That assessment was required under a law meant to ensure Hong Kong retained its capitalist norms and Western legal system as Beijing promised when it took control of the territory from Britain in 1997.

A report the State Department released earlier this week suggested likely targets for potential sanctions. It identified the Legislative Affairs Commission of China’s legislature, Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong and the Chinese central government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, plus the heads of those two offices. All are involved in drafting and enforcing the national-security measures Beijing plans to impose on Hong Kong.

Mr. Trump said Friday that the State Department would revise its travel advisory for Hong Kong to reflect the “increased danger of surveillance and punishment by the Chinese state security apparatus.” The department’s current advisory for China advises Americans not to travel there. Before the pandemic, it warned Americans traveling in the country that they could be detained and subjected to “prolonged interrogations” for “state security” reasons or for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government.

The president also said the U.S. would redirect the funds it currently sends to the WHO to other “deserving, urgent, global public-health needs” because the agency had failed to make the reforms the U.S. had requested.

“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” Mr. Trump said, despite China contributing less to the organization than the U.S. “We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engaged with them directly, but they have refused to act.”

The WHO has denied that it was too deferential to China in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak. United Nations officials have warned that cutting off funding to the group during a pandemic could complicate the response to the global crisis.

In April, Mr. Trump suspended contributions to the WHO while his administration reviewed the agency’s coronavirus response.

Mr. Trump said last week in a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the “only way forward” would be if the organization “can actually demonstrate independence from China.” Mr. Trump said the WHO would need to “major substantive improvements” within 30 days or he would cut funding and reconsider U.S. membership.

His announcement on Friday came 10 days after he sent the letter.

The WHO has relied heavily on U.S. funding. In the two-year period ending in December 2019, the U.S. had contributed $893 million to the group, according to WHO records. The Trump administration has previously said the U.S. provided $453 million to the WHO in fiscal year 2019.

China contributed just under $86 million during that period. Beijing has increased its funding to the group as a result of the pandemic and in recent months announced a further $50 million in contributions.

Mr. Trump didn’t elaborate Friday on which Chinese foreign nationals would be barred from the U.S. Senior administration officials told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that the administration planned to cancel the visas of Chinese graduate students and researchers associated with Chinese universities that have ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Senior administration officials have discussed revoking Chinese student visas for months.

Mr. Trump has expressed increasing frustration with China in recent weeks, alleging that officials there didn’t do enough to stop the coronavirus from spreading around the world and weren’t transparent with other nations about the extent of the outbreak. Concerns in the Trump administration that Chinese students are serving as conduits for espionage and intellectual-property theft predate the pandemic.

About 360,000 Chinese students are studying or working in the U.S., roughly a third of the total international student population. Of these, many are enrolled in graduate programs or working as researchers in the science and engineering fields.

U.S. officials accuse China of targeting academia, including by sending military researchers to American labs and using talent-recruitment programs to bring top scientists and entrepreneurs, as well as their intellectual property, to China. Beijing has denied any systematic effort to steal U.S. scientific research, and Chinese state media have called U.S. allegations of intellectual-property theft a political tool.

—Rebecca Ballhaus and Ian Talley contributed to this article.

Write to Andrew Restuccia at Andrew.Restuccia@wsj.com and Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com