Countries with moderate and low per capita GDP have billions of people and populations that are growing faster than rich countries. These present potentially huge markets. Many of their infrastructure projects are financed by the IMF and World Bank which are largely financed by the U.S. government. The mission of the World Bank has become heavily focused on combating climate change.
Global Economic Leaders Gathering in U.S. Confront Trump’s New World Order
The I.M.F. and World Bank are holding their spring meetings as President Trump’s trade war upends the global economy.
By Alan Rappeport, The New York Times, April 22, 2025
Global economic leaders are gathering in Washington this week for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They are arriving in a United States that is vastly different from the one they visited during the same forum last fall…
The multilateral institutions that are hosting the meetings and that receive funding from the United States are also under increasing pressure to prove their relevance to the Trump administration while avoiding confrontations that could compel Mr. Trump to withdraw from them entirely…
“The Trump administration has left little doubt about its distaste for practically every multilateral institution, including the I.M.F. and the World Bank, because it views these institutions’ recommendations and policies as not always perfectly aligned with narrowly defined American interests,” said Eswar Prasad, a former China director of the I.M.F.
Before Mr. Trump was elected, the Project 2025 policy blueprint drafted by his conservative allies called for the United States to withdraw from the I.M.F. and the World Bank…
The I.M.F.’s latest World Economic Outlook projects that global output will slow to 2.8 percent this year from 3.3 percent in 2024. That is half a percentage point lower than the fund’s forecast in January…The I.M.F. expects U.S. output to slow to 1.8 percent in 2025, down from 2.8 percent last year. … [end quote]
On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. Under President Trump, the U.S. withdrew from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in October 2017 and June 2018 respectively.
Since the mandates of the IMF and World Bank include DEI and climate change initiatives, not to mention that the lending is invested in what President Trump would consider [expletive deleted]-hole countries, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the U.S. pulled out of the IMF and World Bank.
I don’t know how that would affect the billions of dollars already loaned out by these banks.
Wendy