When the Trump administration nominated a White House official to run the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) this summer, it didn’t just tear up a 60-year old unwritten agreement that a Latin American would head the bank. It has also kicked off a clash among Latin American countries, and between several of them and Washington, over the bank’s future—at a time when financing of the kind the region’s most important development institution can provide is critical to pulling Latin America out of its post-pandemic economic collapse.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s nomination of Mauricio Claver-Carone, the senior director of Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, flies in the face of the bank’s 1959 foundational agreement, when then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower laid down that a Latin American should run the region’s marquee development bank. Other multilateral financial institutions, such as the World Bank, traditionally headed by an American, and the International Monetary Fund, helmed by a European, have similar national criteria for leadership. Always with the blessing of the United States, the IDB has in its history had just four leaders—a Chilean, a Mexican, an Uruguayan, and, most recently, a Colombian, Luis Alberto Moreno, who is set to depart after a 15-year tenure later this year.
