From the article:
World Bank directors selected White House nominee David Malpass on Friday to run the institution after an uncontested race, giving the job to a former Trump campaign adviser and Treasury official who has at times spoken critically of the bank.
Development officials had expected a more competitive contest for the job after the previous president, Jim Yong Kim, stepped down in January. But no other countries nominated candidates, apparently content to stick with the long tradition of allowing the United States to choose the bank’s leadership.
In a message to World Bank staff on Friday, Malpass sought to reassure skeptics who have called out his and the White House’s critical remarks on multilateral institutions.
Malpass also repeated his intention to focus the bank’s attention on the neediest nations, a priority that could cause friction with the World Bank’s more affluent borrowers, including China.
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One of those reforms winds down lending to higher-income countries such as China, a plan Malpass has endorsed.
“China is the world’s second-biggest economy,” he said in February. “It doesn’t make too much sense for the higher-income countries to be drawing so many of the resources of the bank when there are poorer countries that could make use of those resources.”
Scott Morris, a former Treasury official and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said Malpass’s Friday remarks were an “important and constructive signal,” but that bank shareholders would have to exercise strong oversight to be sure the bank’s mission stays on track.
“As bad as the Trump administration’s posture and policies are on climate change or support for refugees, Mr. Malpass now seems to recognize that he is accountable to a diversity of governments and shareholders — not just one. But saying he understands the multilateral goals of the bank is one thing, and embracing the agenda is something else,” Morris said.
Doug Hertzler, senior policy analyst with ActionAid USA in D.C., said he found it “disturbing” that “someone who has been against international cooperation would be named to head the World Bank, really without much objection.”
The Trump administration has questioned the value of multilateral institutions including the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. But it supported a funding increase for the World Bank last year, which raised $13 billion from member countries.
In exchange, the White House got the bank to agree to reforms, including a review of the salaries of board members and staff, which the administration viewed as excessive in some cases. Senior managers this year received no salary increases.