Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is urging the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sell an elite country club it owns in Montgomery County, so the organization can “go back to their core mission.”

Asked Wednesday what changes he expected to see now that his former chief of staff, Dan Katz, has become the IMF’s second-in-command, Bessent told reporters: “They can sell the golf course.” The secretary was referring to Bretton Woods Recreation Center in Germantown, which the IMF established in 1968 “to provide attractive and non-discriminatory recreational facilities for its staff, retirees and immediate family,” according to its website.

“They’re going to go back to their core mission. And their core mission is of providing liquidity, providing backstops, and being useful as an intervention when… countries are in trouble,” Bessent said of the IMF during its annual meeting with the World Bank in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Katz was appointed as the IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director, signaling President Donald Trump’s plan to shake up the global financial organization. Bessent and other Trump administration officials have long criticized the IMF as a bloated bureaucracy more focused on climate change projects or what the Treasury Secretary calls “social engineering” than macroeconomic development.

Richard Vatz, a professor emeritus of political science at Towson University, told The Baltimore Sun he believes Bessent is right to question the relationship between the IMF and Bretton Woods.

“I think Bessent’s not taking any risk at all by coming out against them,” Vatz said, adding that Bretton Woods was established at a time of widespread racial discrimination in the golf community. The country club admitted Black members upon its founding but excluded “non-bankers,” according to a 1979 New York Times article.

Bretton Woods — which takes its name from the international monetary order negotiated by victorious Allied powers after World War II — is valued at about $20 million and boasts an 18-hole golf course, two swimming pools, and dining and banquet rooms.

The New York Post reported that Bretton Woods’ initiation fees between $12,000 and $20,000 are automatically waived for all employees of the IMF and World Bank, who collectively make up 80% of the club’s membership.

Club documents cited by The Post show that IMF employees who make less than $162,700 annually pay only monthly dues of between $142 and $312 per month, while senior executives pay $355 a month. World Bank staffers pay between $213 and $532 in dues, according to The Post.

Bretton Woods members who do not work for either the IMF or World Bank must pay both the five-figure initiation fees and monthly dues running from $235 to $585, the club’s website shows.

Bretton Woods is formally registered as a nonprofit that operates independently of the IMF, but 2023 tax filings show two IMF executives are members of its board: Deputy Director of Human Resources Robert York and Olivier Fleurence, Deputy Director of Corporate Services and Facilities.

Bessent told The Post that, under Katz, the IMF may put Bretton Woods up for sale as part of a cost-cutting effort.

“I don’t think (Trump) knows about it. I don’t think he would be happy about it,” Bessent said.

The U.S. Treasury did not respond to The Sun’s request for further comment.

Maryland District 15 state Sen. Brian Feldman and Dels. Linda Foley, David Fraser-Hidalgo and Lily Qi, did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment on what a potential sale of Bretton Woods would mean for the community.

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