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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rips IMF over woke ‘mission creep’
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ripped the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday for focusing its resources on promoting woke causes instead of economic stability.
Speaking at the Institute of International Finance forum in Washington, DC, Bessent accused the IMF of “mission creep,” claiming that the agency “devotes disproportionate time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and social issues.”
“Focus on these areas is crowding out its work on critical macroeconomic issues,” Bessent said. “The IMF has been whistling past the graveyard.”
Papers written by IMF experts voice support for left-leaning causes such as net-zero and carbon taxes. It also takes part in providing data for the controversial global gender inequality index.
Bessent, 63, also warned IMF’s partner institution the World Bank, a development lender that claims to eliminate poverty and fight climate change, that it needs to rein in excessive spending.
The Post has exclusively reported on the bank’s lavish travel policy that sees jet-setting bureaucrats enjoy the use of first-class international travel – and sometimes even private jets for the body’s top brass – when they head abroad to lecture developing countries on raising living standards.
The founder of the Key Square Group investment firm said officials there “should no longer expect blank checks for vapid, buzzword-centric marketing accompanied by half-hearted commitments to reform” and that it must be “fit for purpose again.”
“The IMF and World Bank serve critical roles in the international system. And the Trump administration is eager to work with them, so long as they can stay true to their missions,” Bessent said.
“The IMF and World Bank have enduring value. But mission creep has knocked these institutions off course. We must enact key reforms to ensure the Bretton Woods institutions are serving their stakeholders – not the other way around.”
He urged both bodies “to refocus on their core missions” and said they would be “held accountable.”
Speaking to a group of reporters after his speech, the senior Trump administration official appeared to suggest that World Bank chief Ajay Banga and IMF boss Kristalina Georgieva had not yet won the full backing of President Trump.
“They are both good leaders,” Bessent said. “I hope that they will earn the confidence of the administration in the coming months through their actions. It will be implementation, implementation, implementation.
“We look forward to continuing our engagement with the US authorities on their vision for the IMF,” an IMF spokesman said. The World Bank did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“American dominance of these institutions is still a huge part of America First,” one source familiar with the matter told The Post.
Bessent also took aim at Beijing’s Chinese Communist Party for “ exporting its way out of its economic troubles.”
He said that “more than 100 countries” had approached the current administration for talks since the announcement of the so-called reciprocal tariffs earlier this month.
Bessent’s remarks came just a day after the IMF, based in DC, slashed its growth forecast for the US economy.
Experts cited continued uncertainty over Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs as the main reason why they cut expectations for 2025 to 1.8% from 2.7% in January.
“The April 2 Rose Garden announcement forced us to jettison our projections,” chief IMF economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said on Tuesday.
“The common denominator is that tariffs are a negative supply shock for the economy, which is imposing them,” he added.
The IMF was created out of the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 in New Hampshire, where the US, the UK, and the former Soviet Union discussed how to shape the post-WW2 global economy.
The 190-member body is often described as a lender of last resort because it helps bail out debt-laden economies, although critics say that it often demands austerity measures that are too harsh.
This global financial firefighter was at the forefront of the European debt crisis in 2008 when Eurozone economies were sent into meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
It asked nations such as Greece, Ireland, and Spain to slash social spending and trim back the public sector in return for loans backed by richer IMF members.
Ironically, officials at the global lender also enjoy lavish perks virtually unheard of in the private sector and many people in the countries that take its loans can only dream of.
The Post revealed in December how its staffers can gain cut-rate access to an upmarket Maryland golf and country club that costs regular Joes at least $20,000 to join.
The IMF’s top directors can rake in around $437,000 annually, compared with $52,000 for junior staffers, according to the latest publicly available salary information.
They can also pick up eye-popping retirement benefits, including “a generous final salary” pension and comprehensive worldwide health insurance, the IMF’s recruitment page states.
