Author: Peter Baker / Source: New York Times
Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to nominate David Malpass, the under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, to head the World Bank, picking an outspoken critic of the institution who has pushed to overhaul its longstanding practices, administration officials said on Monday.
The officials, who insisted on anonymity to confirm the choice before the formal announcement, said the president will unveil his selection on Wednesday. The nomination must be ratified by the bank’s board, but by tradition, the United States, the largest shareholder, has long named its president.
Mr. Malpass’s nomination could prompt debate given his past comments about the role of multilateral institutions. Like Mr. Trump, he has questioned the scope and mission of international institutions such as the World Bank, saying they have grown “more intrusive” and need to be refocused. The larger trend toward multilateralism, he has said, “has gone substantially too far.”
That viewpoint squares with a broader skepticism that Mr. Trump’s administration has shown toward various structures of what is often called the liberal international order, including the World Trade Organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and any number of international agreements. Just last week, the administration announced that it has suspended a nuclear arms treaty negotiated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, citing Russian cheating.
The World Bank, controlled by the world’s most developed nations, lends money to developing nations for infrastructure and development projects. From his role at the Treasury Department, Mr. Malpass pressed the World Bank last year to commit to a series of changes even as it moved to increase its capital.
Mr. Malpass, whose loyalty to the president runs deep, has also been the Treasury Department’s point person on trade talks with China and traveled to Beijing last month to set the framework for last week’s talks in Washington. He was then…
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