The U.S. Doesn’t Deserve the World Bank Presidency
During his time in office, President Donald Trump has named a climate-change skeptic and an energy lobbyist as the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, a foreclosure profiteer to head Treasury, a low-wage employer to run the Labor Department, and a critic of public schools to manage the Department of Education. His energy secretary once argued that the department should be abolished, and his onetime leader of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has argued that the bureau should not exist.
It came as little surprise, then, that last week Trump put forward another potential fox in the henhouse, naming the Treasury official David” and argued that “has gone substantially too far—to the point where it is hurting U.S. and global growth.” As of yet, there is little appetite from foreign countries or the bank’s board to fight the nomination. But it is a missed opportunity for the institution and its client countries. And this whole sorry episode makes it even clearer that the United States should lose, or relinquish, its leadership of the bank.
