Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s Chief of Staff Dan Katz will leave the Trump administration and join the International Monetary Fund as the organization’s second in command, three sources told the New York Post on Wednesday.
Katz is set to become the first deputy managing director and the most senior American at the IMF, reporting to Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist and ex-EU commissioner.
Katz "is one of the secretary’s closest confidantes,” said one insider. “It is a big win for President Trump’s America First economic agenda on the international stage.”
The nomination is expected to be readily approved by Georgieva, sources said, as an American has regularly held the No. 2 role at the Fund, according to the New York Post.
A vacancy as first deputy managing director was created when Gita Gopinath, nominated by the Biden administration, resigned from her job last month to return to Harvard.
“The Fund is expected to make the formal announcement this Friday that Dan is their pick for this role,” said one source. “A two-week comment period follows this announcement, after which Dan would be formally appointed by Kristalina Georgieva.”
Newsmax has reached out to the Treasury spokesperson for comment.
Katz is a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who joined the Treasury Department in January.
The Yale graduate and Goldman Sachs alum, who also served in the first Trump administration, had a key role in developing the U.S.’s economic partnership deal with Ukraine and is seen as Bessent’s point man on China, the New York Post reported.
Bessent has recently criticized the IMF for “mission creep” and accused it of promoting "woke" causes in a speech in April in which he said the organization “devotes disproportionate time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and social issues.”
Last week, sources told the New York Post that the climate and gender units at the Fund would no longer operate as standalone divisions inside the body, but would instead be merged into its wider macroeconomic unit.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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