The Trump administration forced more than $1 billion in cuts to the United Nations budget over the past six months — a historic reduction U.S. officials are calling unprecedented in the organization’s history.
On June 30, all 193 U.N. member states approved a peacekeeping budget of approximately $5.1 billion for the coming fiscal year — a cut of about $550 million, or 9.7 percent, from the previous year.
Combined with a 15 percent reduction to the U.N.’s regular budget approved in December, the agreements total more than $1 billion in savings on assessed budgets.
“We’ve achieved over a billion dollars of savings in six months, which is unprecedented. Any one cut would be unprecedented. The totality of the reforms is monumental.”
U.S. Ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform Jeff Bartos told Fox News Digital that sustained pressure from the United States drove the changes. Bartos said the administration’s approach is reshaping how the bloated bureaucracy operates.
The cuts come as the Trump administration hammers the U.N. for being overly bureaucratic and inefficient — a core complaint conservatives have leveled at the international body for decades.
Even U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric confirmed the reductions were unprecedented.
Bartos pointed to real-world examples of the streamlining, including the U.N. Mission in South Sudan, where the U.S. worked to cut the mandate before slashing its budget.
Another reform approved June 30 changes how the U.N. handles unused budget credits. Previously, the organization returned unspent funds to member states even when those contributions had never been paid in cash.
The new approach, approved on a four-year trial basis, returns unspent funds only when backed by actual cash received.
Bartos said this change could save more than $1 billion over the next three years — on top of the cuts already secured.
Secretary-General António Guterres, who advocated for the credit reform for nearly a decade, welcomed the change. He described the old system as a “Kafkaesque cycle” in which the U.N. was expected “to give back cash that did not exist.”
Bartos indicated the recent budget agreements are only the beginning. The administration plans to pursue further changes to staff compensation, employee benefits, and the U.N. pension system.
“There’s massive numbers of additional reforms that our team is working on right now,” Bartos said.
Reform efforts are expected to accelerate as member states prepare to select the next secretary-general in 2027, with Guterres scheduled to leave office at the end of his second term.
