As US president, Donald Trump gave Geneva’s international organisations a rough time, withdrawing from several of them. His successor, Joe Biden, promised that the United States would return to multilateral affairs, but his actions have not always borne this out. International Geneva has bitter memories of Trump’s first term in office. During his four years in the White House, from 2017 to 2021, the former president launched a string of attacks on the multilateral system. Deeming them “biased”, “inadequate” and generally contrary to American interests, his administration left the Human Rights Council, withdrew from the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic, and caused deadlocks within the World Trade Organization. His successor, Joe Biden, was quick to promise that the United States would return to multilateralism. Not only did the Democrat president rejoin several of the treaties and bodies abandoned during the Trump era, but his administration also embarked on ...
