Dear Colleagues,

This issue will first focus on the IMF/World Bank Spring meetings in Washington DC(21-26 April).For obvious reasons, a key question this year was “whether — and how — the U.S. plans to stay engaged with the World Bank and IMF.”    Both institutions have been trying to keep “low profile” versus Trump 2.0 so far, while tweaking a bit their rhetoric and key aims (eg: more on jobs (not wrong), less climate (very wrong)).  Over here in Europe, at WTO headquarters in Geneva, some are also wondering whether the organisation can survive Trump 2.0. So it’s a “popular” question, clearly  (sigh).  On Wednesday, the Trump administration made it known (via the US Treasury Secretary) that they will stay engaged with the World Bank and IMF but “want to tackle their ‘mission creep’”.  (on a side note: speaking of ‘creeps’, I think the US are currently being run by a bunch)

From some of the discussions in Washington it’s a relatively small step to the Vatican.  Indeed...