From the article:
The World Bank has begun advising the Trump administration on its infrastructure plans, the latest product of a budding relationship between first daughter Ivanka Trump and bank president Jim Yong Kim that is raising eyebrows among bank veterans and governance experts.
The unusual move grew out of an April 3 White House meeting between Mr Kim and Ms Trump to discuss a new $1bn women’s entrepreneurship fund championed by Donald Trump’s eldest daughter that the bank is trying to set up ahead of a G20 summit in Germany in July...
In a budget released last week, the White House argued “that the US currently pays more than its fair share” to the World Bank. The budget also proposed a cut of almost $100m annually from the US’s planned $1.1bn contribution to the International Development Association, the bank arm that provides low-interest loans and grants to the world’s poorest nations.
Scott Morris, a former US Treasury official now at the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank, said Mr Kim’s moves to build a relationship with the Trump administration were canny given the current situation. “He has an obligation to the bank as a whole to have a relationship with the government of its biggest shareholder,” Mr Morris said.
But others worry the World Bank is becoming too cosy with an administration that is vowing to cut foreign aid budgets and family planning programmes.
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