BURLINGTON, Vt. — Many expect President-elect Joe Biden’s White House will be more supportive and engaged with multilateral institutions than President Donald Trump’s administration has been. What that means for the World Bank could depend on how fully the institution’s own president, David Malpass, has embraced an organization he harshly criticized in the past.
Malpass began his term in April 2019, and he will have more than three years remaining when Inauguration Day arrives on Jan. 20. While few experts expect a Biden administration would seek to somehow remove Malpass from the post — something they have no formal authority to do — it remains to be seen whether a president nominated from the ranks of the Trump administration can remake himself for the Biden era.
“You can’t have the largest shareholder of the institution, the architect of the institution, the country that has always nominated the person who will be president, in a fundamentally different place than the institution itself. That would have to be resolved in some way,” said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.