Macroscope | Key voices missing in chorus of criticism of Trump’s destructive actions

Amid the rising chorus of criticism of US President Donald Trump and his administration’s egregious policy actions, the voices of multilateral institutions have been sadly muted. These internationally owned and supposedly independent bodies appear to be running scared of losing their access to US funding, but the greater risk for them is a loss of credibility if they continue with this cautious approach.

By contrast, the heads of a dozen or so central banks have summoned sufficient courage to challenge Trump’s use of his bully pulpit to berate US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Even though these central bankers seem to be operating on the principle of “safety in numbers”, their token protest is better than nothing.

From the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the World Bank Group, from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the World Trade Organization, plus various United Nations and other multilateral organisations, the reticence over critiquing Trump’s actions has been ominous and yet little noticed.

It seems Trump is cutting loose from all restraints, seizing other countries’ leaders and threatening annexation of foreign territories while his administration prepares criminal charges against Powell for not bowing to the president’s demands for faster interest rate cuts. Where are the multilateral institutions whose international ownership arguably gives them at least a moral obligation, if not the legal right, to intervene?

These multilateral financial, trade and other institutions arguably hold the fate of the global economy – not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars of internationally subscribed funds – in their hands. Even so, they are standing by meekly as these invaluable assets are placed in jeopardy by someone who gives the impression of regarding himself as global dictator-in-chief.

The “multilaterals”, as they are often referred to as a group, are far from constituting even collectively anything approaching global authority, especially at a time when the United States in particular is asserting its right to aggressive sovereignty and when nationalism is rife among other leading nations. Even so, they do possess some residual power of economic persuasion if only they choose to exercise it.