"The United States is one of 193 countries in the United Nations, and yet we pay 22 percent of the entire budget and more," Trump said. "The United States bears an unfair cost burden, but to be fair, if it could actually accomplish all of its stated goals, especially the goal of peace, this investment would easily be well worth it."

Many U.N. officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, agree that changes are long overdue. But compared with the rest of Trump's agenda, reforming the U.N. will make rewriting the U.S. tax code and overhauling Obamacare look easy.



To begin with, the U.N is not a single institution so much as it is a sprawling global network of dozens of humanitarian and development agencies. By design, the decision-making process is distributed among a wide range of countries and constituencies that may have little in common and opposing views and interests.