Scott Morris
Senior Fellow, Director of the US Development Policy Initiative
Topics:
Expertise
International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and particularly the relationship between the IFIs and the United States.
Bio
Scott Morris is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and director of the US Development Policy Initiative. In addition to managing the center’s work on US development policy, his research addresses development finance issues, debt policy, governance issues at international financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF, and China’s role as a development actor.
Morris served as deputy assistant secretary for development finance and debt at the US Treasury Department during the first term of the Obama Administration. In that capacity, he led US engagement with the multilateral development bank, as well as US participation in the Paris Club of official creditors. He also represented the US government in the G-20’s Development Working Group and was the Treasury’s “+1” on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. During his time at Treasury, Morris led negotiations for four general capital increases at the multilateral development banks and replenishments of the International Development Association (IDA), Asian Development Fund, and African Development Fund.
Morris was a senior staff member on the Financial Services Committee in the US House of Representatives, where he was responsible for the Committee’s international policy issues, including the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (the landmark reform of the CFIUS process), as well multiple reauthorizations of the US Export-Import Bank charter and approval of a $108 billion financing agreement for the International Monetary Fund in 2009. Previously, Morris was a vice president at the Committee for Economic Development in Washington, DC.
More From Scott Morris
May 19, 2017
Blog Post
A joint analysis with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows the Trump Administration’s proposed budgets cuts could leave US development spending further behind than ever on its fair share.
May 11, 2017
Blog Post
That sound you hear is the foreign aid community’s collective sigh of relief following the White House’s announcement of its intention to nominate Ambassador Mark Green as USAID administrator.
April 11, 2017
Publication
Established in 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was designed with a singular mission: to reduce poverty through economic growth. The agency’s approach reflects key principles of aid effectiveness, in particular, country selectivity, focus on results, and emphasis on local ownership.
April 11, 2017
Publication
Since 1971, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has served as the US government’s development finance institution. OPIC works to mobilize private capital to address development challenges while advancing US foreign policy priorities—furthering strategic, development, economic, and political objectives. OPIC aims to catalyze investment abroad through loans, guarantees, and insurance, which enable OPIC to complement rather than compete with the private sector. The independent agency also plays a key role in helping US investors gain a foothold in emerging markets and is barred from supporting projects that could have a negative impact on the US economy.
March 27, 2017
Blog Post
With big cuts to US bilateral and multilateral assistance looming, the House Committee on Financial Services convened a hearing to investigate accountability and results at the World Bank. Scott Morris, CGD’s director of the US Development Policy initiative (DPI), was joined by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Sasha Chavkin, CalTech’s Jean Ensminger, and BIC’s Elana Berger. It was a thoughtful conversation, with everyone on the panel agreeing that it is in the United States’ interest to continue engagement with the World Bank. Here are my main takeaways from the hearing.
March 22, 2017
Publication
Scott Morris testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade at a hearing titled, “Examining Results and Accountability at the World Bank” on March 22, 2017. Morris’s testimony offered recommendations for Congress in effective oversight and influence at the World Bank, as well as discussing what US contributions to the institution deliver for US taxpayers.
March 22, 2017
Blog Post
What do the cuts mean for the people most affected and for America’s role as a global development leader? That’s the subject of this edition of the CGD Podcast.
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April 14, 2014
Blog Post
Clare Walsh, a senior official in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the chair of the Development Working Group of the G-20, recently visited CGD for a round-table discussion with CGD senior staff. Afterwards I hosted her and CGD senior associate, Scott Morris, a former senior US Treasury official, on the Wonkcast.
June 3, 2015
Blog Post
The US failure to approve governance reforms at the IMF is what led China to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Ben Bernanke is the latest prominent voice to employ this narrative.
July 5, 2017
Blog Post
Each of the G20 summits of the past seven years has suffered in comparison with the London and Pittsburgh Summits of 2009, when the imperative of crisis response motivated leaders, finance ministers, and central bankers to coordinate effectively with each other. Subsequent summits have lacked the same sense of urgency and have failed to deliver any kind of agenda that can be pinpointed as clearly as “saving the global economy.” This week’s summit in Hamburg, Germany promises more of the same, with the real possibility that the G20’s stock could fall even further at the hands of a non-cooperative US delegation.
March 27, 2017
Blog Post
With big cuts to US bilateral and multilateral assistance looming, the House Committee on Financial Services convened a hearing to investigate accountability and results at the World Bank. Scott Morris, CGD’s director of the US Development Policy initiative (DPI), was joined by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Sasha Chavkin, CalTech’s Jean Ensminger, and BIC’s Elana Berger. It was a thoughtful conversation, with everyone on the panel agreeing that it is in the United States’ interest to continue engagement with the World Bank. Here are my main takeaways from the hearing.
March 11, 2014
Blog Post
My guest on the Wonkcast this week is Scott Morris, a senior associate here at CGD and former deputy assistant secretary at the US Treasury, where he oversaw US ties with the multilateral development banks.
Scott recently led a study group of CGD colleagues and outside experts that reviewed G-20 efforts to increase financing for infrastructure in developing countries. The group produced a short note proposing five new deliverables for the G-20 on infrastructure finance. (See Scott’s blog post with Madeleine Gleave for an even shorter version.)
July 12, 2013
Publication
The World Bank should be ambitious in working toward clean energy approaches in its development strategies, but it would be a mistake to definitively rule out coal in all circumstances. Such a decision would be bad for development and would also undermine the very goals that the bank’s coal critics espouse by further pitting developing and developed countries against each other in the climate debate occurring within the bank. The key challenges are to identify the relevant development needs related to coal-fired generation, to define the role of the bank, and to elaborate guidelines to direct decisions. In this essay, we discuss the broad issues and then summarize what the guidelines likely would mean in practice.
June 14, 2017
Blog Post
Here, CGD experts Amanda Glassman, Scott Morris, and Jeremy Konyndyk weigh in on some of the key points we heard (and live tweeted) during Secretary Tillerson’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, later, when he answered questions from the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.
June 30, 2015
Blog Post
The Chinese government has published the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s (AIIB) newly adopted articles of agreement. That’s an encouraging early sign of transparency, and more importantly, of timely transparency. Much of what’s in the articles was foreshadowed by previous comments and reporting, but there are surprises, such as stronger-than-expected veto powers for the Chinese and the possibility for non-sovereign membership.
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