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.
To the Editor:
Re “Trump to Nominate David Malpass to Lead the World Bank” (nytimes.com, Feb. 4):
The nomination of David Malpass to lead the World Bank, an institution whose very existence President Trump has repeatedly questioned, is another critical task he has handed to men and women whose stated views and history are inimical to those institutions’ missions.
Whether it was the now departed Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency (and his soon-to-be successor, Andrew Wheeler), or Betsy DeVos at the Education Department, Mr. Trump’s appointees, under the banner of “deregulation,” lean away from their agencies’ tasks.
How long will it be before President Trump names El Chapo to head the Drug Enforcement Administration?
Steven Horwitz
Moraga, Calif.
