President Joe Biden is attempting to give the World Bank billions of dollars before Donald Trump takes over and wields a machete to international development funds through his America First agenda.
Biden pledged $4 billion toward the World Bank’s International Development Association for the ‘world’s poorest countries’ during a closed door meeting at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, according to Reuters.
More broadly, Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer told reporters Monday morning that Biden will ‘highlight his funding request to unlock $36 billion in new lending at the World Bank’ during his time at the summit.
The president is committing money where his mouth is ahead of Trump’s January 20th takeover – funding areas like international development and the prevention of climate change.
But those promises aren’t exactly Trump-proof.
A senior administration official clarified that the $4 billion Biden pledged was a ‘future budget request,’ though added that it’s a ‘fairly well supported initiative and the ‘most effective and efficient tools we have to fight poverty.’
But the official also confirmed that none of that money would go out the door in the next two months.
‘IDA has been strongly supported – it’s a bipartisan tool,’ the official insisted.
On this six-day trip to South America, Biden also committed $50 million to the Amazon Fund, the most significant international cooperation to preserve the Amazon rainforest.
He made the announcement during his Sunday trip to Manaus, where he conducted an aerial tour of the Amazon and then walked the paths of the Museu da Amazônia with his daughter Ashley and granddaughter Natalie.
The president also taunted Trump during his brief remarks, suggesting that ‘nobody can reverse’ the Democrat’s green legacy.
‘It’s no secret that I’m leaving office in January,’ Biden said in a brief statement to the press, reading from teleprompters set up in the jungle setting. ‘I will leave my successor and my country a strong foundation to build on if they choose to do so.’
Biden said that while some seek to ‘deny or delay’ the clean energy revolution ‘nobody, nobody can reverse it.’
‘Not when so many people, regardless of party or politics, are enjoying its benefits. Not when countries around the world are harnessing the clean energy revolution to pull ahead themselves,’ the 81-year-old Democrat said.
‘The question now is, which government will stand in the way and which will seize the enormous economic opportunity,’ Biden added.
The election of Trump has led to a chilling effect over all the federal agencies – and places like the World Bank, where The New York Post reported that employees are terrified of deep cuts.
‘They have been running around like headless chickens since Trump won,’ one permanent World Bank staffer told The Post. ‘It has sparked fear … They will be desperately trying to show they are saving money.’
Trump announced last week that his billionaire sidekick Elon Musk, as well as former 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, would co-lead DOGE – the ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’
Labeling it the ‘Manhattan Project of our time,’ Musk and Ramaswamy are expected to recommend all sorts of deep cuts to the federal bureaucracy.
