Testing tradition, Trump taps US official to lead Latin bank

MIAMI (AP) — The Trump administration said Tuesday it plans to nominate the top White House official for Latin America to lead the Inter-American Development Bank, aiming to break a six-decade tradition of choosing the bank's leadership from candidates in that region.

The Treasury Department said Mauricio Claver-Carone could provide unique leadership that will help Latin America and the Caribbean overcome the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens to plunge the region into one of its worst economic crises in decades.

“The IDB is at a critical juncture as the region faces growing challenges to economic growth and sustainable development, particularly in light of the global pandemic,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

Since its founding in 1959, the Washington-based development bank has always been led by someone from Latin America. The current head, Colombia's Luis Alberto Moreno, is preparing to step down after 15 years following elections for his replacement scheduled for September.

Claver-Carone, now the National Security Council's senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs, is the main architect of the Trump administration's policy of “maximum pressure” on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and leftist allies Cuba and Nicaragua — what his one-time boss, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, called the “troika of tyranny.”

In an interview, Claver-Carone, a Cuban-American attorney, said that in recent weeks, several presidents and officials in the region with whom he is in daily contact urged him to take the exceptional step of running for the bank's top job because they want the U.S. to help mobilize capital and investment so the region recovers swiftly from the coronavirus pandemic.

“The number one complaint forever with IDB is that the U.S....