Trump to tap Malpass, critic of World Bank, to lead it

The World Bank may be poised for a shakeup with President Donald Trump planning to nominate David Malpass, who has been a critic of the bank, to lead the institution focused on global poverty.

Malpass’ selection was confirmed by a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions. Trump is expected to make the announcement later this week.

Now the undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, Malpass has been an outspoken skeptic of the 189-nation World Bank, a leading source of funding for economic development. The World Bank provides low-cost loans for projects around the world. Among its key missions is helping combat poverty in developing countries.

Malpass has called for curbing the World Bank’s financial reach and has criticized its lending to China, one of the bank’s leading recipients of aid.

If the World Bank’s directors approve his nomination, Malpass would be positioned to overhaul an institution that, he has argued, has become too focused on its own expansion and prestige rather than on the interests of poor countries.

“A host of organizations are creating mountains of debt without solving problems,” Malpass said in a speech last year. “Huge organizations like the World Bank and the many multilateral development banks have created an environment where their own growth ends up being as important as their clients’ growth.”

Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow in global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Malpass appears intent on weakening a World Bank that is already rethinking its role in a world with broader greater access to capital markets but also chronic humanitarian crises.

“It ... seems like he’s the wrong guy if you wanted to strengthen the World Bank,” Patrick said. “He has such a record of criticism of the World Bank. And he seems to have bought into the sovereignty mindset of the administration that global institutions are a threat.”

Having Malpass at the helm of the World Bank would fit a pattern inside the Trump administration of tapping officials to lead institutions whose core missions they have publicly questioned or opposed.