US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent will skip the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok amid mounting domestic tensions over the Iran war and tremors in global bond markets.
A department official confirmed that deputy secretary Francis Brooke and Erin Browne, under-secretary for international affairs, would attend the meeting in Bessent’s place.
A US official said Bessent’s decision to skip the annual meetings was due to “domestic engagements”.
The meetings come just weeks before crucial US midterm elections, when President Donald Trump’s Republican Party is expected to perform badly amid voter anger over cost of living pressures triggered by the Iran war. Treasury yields are also trading close to multi-decade highs, reflecting a broader sell-off in global bond markets.
Canada’s finance minister François-Philippe Champagne is also skipping the meetings due to commitments to prepare the country’s budget. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem and assistant deputy finance minister Patrick Halley will go instead.
Bessent had been expected to chair a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors on Thursday morning, as the US holds the multilateral group’s presidency this year. Fed chair Kevin Warsh will attend the meetings.
“The fund and [World Bank] are institutions that the US founded and needs,” said Mark Sobel, a former Treasury official who is now vice-chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum think-tank. “That Bessent was to chair a G20 ministerial meeting makes his non-attendance all the more remarkable and sad.”
Sobel added: “This is a slap in the face for the institutions which will only serve to alienate the rest of the world from the Trump administration.”
The Treasury secretary also skipped a G20 meeting in Cape Town last year, raising concerns that the administration would seek to weaken the role of multilateral organisations such as the G20.
Bessent recently hosted G20 officials in Asheville, North Carolina, as part of the US’s presidency of the organisation.
The round trip to Bangkok was expected to take three days on the aircraft Bessent uses for government travel.
The IMF tends to hold annual meetings outside its Washington headquarters once every three years, although there was a five-year hiatus following the coronavirus pandemic.
Bessent’s absence this year contrasts with the stance of his predecessors. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s finance minister during his first term, travelled to Bali for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in 2018.
Former Treasury secretary Janet Yellen attended the meetings in Morocco in 2023, while Jack Lew, Treasury secretary under former president Barack Obama, attended meetings in Peru.
A Treasury official said the American delegation would “work with partners to address the policies and structural imbalances that have held back growth and contributed to persistent global imbalances”.
“We will also push for greater transparency and more effective approaches to sovereign debt, so that countries facing debt distress can restore stability and return to growth while creditors and borrowers are held to clear and consistent standards,” the official said.