The United States held back its funding to the World Anti-Doping Agency after losing faith in its ability to guard against the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs at events like the Olympics, the White House said.
The decision by the Biden administration is a significant blow to the agency, which has been under intense scrutiny for decisions not to punish or more aggressively investigate positive tests for banned substances by elite Chinese swimmers in recent years.
The choice to withhold the funding that the United States had committed to providing the agency in 2024 was made by the White House in consultation with Congress. The United States had been the single largest country funder to the agency, known as WADA.
“WADA must take concrete actions to restore trust in the world antidoping system and provide athletes the full confidence they deserve,” the White House said in a statement released late on Tuesday. “When U.S. taxpayer dollars are allocated, we must ensure full accountability, and it is our responsibility to ensure those funds are used appropriately.”
The United States had been slated to contribute $3.6 million for 2024, a tiny amount of the federal budget but a significant part of WADA’s funding. The American contribution is matched by the International Olympic Committee and would ultimately make up 14 percent of the organization’s roughly $52 million budget for 2024. It has budgeted to receive $57.5 million this year.
The question of whether the U.S. will provide funding for this year will fall to the second Trump administration, which took an adversarial approach to WADA during President Donald J. Trump’s first term.
On Wednesday, the agency, known as WADA, responded by removing the United States from a position on its board.
WADA said in a statement that in line with its rules, “representatives from a country which has not paid its dues are ineligible to sit on the foundation board or the executive committee.”
Loss of the board seat is automatic, the agency added.
The action by the Biden administration, and WADA’s response to it, will likely ratchet up tensions between the United States on one side and WADA and the I.O.C. on the other. Both WADA and the I.O.C. have defended the antidoping agency’s handling of suspicions about Chinese doping and have gone to great lengths to thwart American attempts to hold WADA accountable for what U.S. officials see as its failures.
The United States is set to host two Olympics in the next decade. White House officials fear that the 2034 Winter Olympics, which were awarded to Salt Lake City in July, could be taken away as a punishment of the United States over both its refusal to pay and ongoing efforts by the Justice Department and Congress to investigate how the positive tests were handled.
U.S. policy toward WADA has been led by Dr. Rahul Gupta, the Biden administration’s drug czar, who oversees the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Dr. Gupta, who sits on WADA’s executive committee, has been warning the agency’s top officials for weeks that he would withhold the U.S. funding if WADA refused to go along with a range of measures that he contended would restore confidence in the agency’s ability to police sports.
Dr. Gupta’s chief demand was that WADA submit to an outside audit of its operations. He also said that WADA needed to drop a defamation lawsuit it filed against American antidoping authorities, who have accused WADA of covering up the positive tests. And he wanted proof that an ethics complaint filed against him — that appeared designed to have him kicked off WADA’s executive committee — was dropped.
But despite a lengthy back and forth between the White House and WADA — including face-to-face meetings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, last month — the agency failed to go along with Dr. Gupta’s demands. It also signaled that if the United States failed to pay there would be consequences and WADA would find alternative funding.
In Riyadh, an Olympic official told a White House official that failure to pay U.S. dues could affect the country’s ability to host or participate in the Olympic Games, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
The White House, in response, researched what fallout the country could face from not paying and concluded that it could mean losing out on hosting the 2034 Winter Olympics. But the White House decided the questions about WADA’s credibility were so great that it needed to move forward with withholding the money, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
American antidoping authorities — who are charged with policing American athletes to ensure they are not doping — praised the White House’s decision to withhold the funding but said it would have no impact on American athletes, since they will still be held to WADA’s antidoping code.
“Unfortunately, the current WADA leaders left the U.S. with no other option after failing to deliver on several very reasonable requests, such as an independent audit of WADA’s operations, to achieve the transparency and accountability needed to ensure WADA is fit for purpose to protect athletes,” said Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
Mr. Tygart pointed out that the United States has contributed more money to WADA since its inception in 2000 than any other country has.
One of WADA’s chief missions is that it is supposed to step in and hold athletes accountable when their own countries fail to do so. In April, The New York Times and the German television network ARD reported that WADA had secretly cleared 23 elite Chinese swimmers in 2021 of doping after they had all tested positive for similarly low levels of a drug that helps athletes train harder and recover quickly.
WADA had accepted a Chinese explanation that the swimmers had likely unwittingly ingested the drug — a prescription heart medication — through food they ate at a hotel they stayed at for a meet, a scenario independent experts have found implausible.
Since testing positive, the swimmers have won a slew of medals at the 2021 and 2024 Summer Olympics, including beating out Americans for golds. One of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive won more medals at the 2024 Paris Games than any other athlete who competed there.
The disclosure in April was followed by others by The Times that raised questions about WADA’s performance and whether it looked the other way when confronted with other positive tests, leading to demands for greater scrutiny of how the international doping agency operates.
WADA and the I.O.C. have criticized a 2019 law that allows U.S. authorities to pursue antidoping cases around the world.
That type of extraterritorial power, they argue, could lead to the breakdown of the global antidoping system and lead to other nations creating similar laws. The I.O.C. recently endorsed WADA’s leaders, Witold Banka, the agency’s president, from Poland, and his deputy Yang Yang, from China, for new terms.
The stance by the White House stands in contrast to how American Olympic and Utah officials have behaved in response to the International Olympic Committee and WADA.
In July, the I.O.C. demanded that officials leading Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2034 Games pledge to protect WADA’s sovereignty. In the face of those demands, the officials — Gene Sykes and Fraser Bullock — capitulated, agreeing that they would push back on American investigations into the positive tests in exchange for the bid.
