The move gives the Treasury an opportunity to recommend a replacement as US President Donald Trump is restructuring the global economy.
According to the IMF, Gita Gopinath, a second-person staff member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said she left her post and returned to Harvard University at the end of August.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva will nominate Gopinath’s successor in “Due Course,” the financial institution said in a statement Monday.
Gopinath joined the fund in 2019 as Chief Economist. The Chief Economist was the first woman to play the role and was promoted to the first assistant managing director in January 2022.
No immediate comment was available from the US Treasury Department, which controls the dominant US stock holdings in the IMF. While European countries have traditionally chosen IMF managing directors, the US Treasury has traditionally recommended candidates for the role of the first assistant managing director.
Gopinath is an Indian-born American citizen.
The timing of this move has surprised some IMF insiders and appears to have been launched by Gopinath.
Gopinato, who left Harvard to join the IMF, returns to university as a professor of economics.
Her departure will provide the US Treasury with the opportunity to recommend a successor when President Donald Trump asks to rebuild the world economy and end the long-standing US trade deficit with high tariffs on imports from almost every country.
She returns to the university that was on the Trump administration’s crosshair after school rejected requests to change governance, employment and admissions practices.
Georgieva said Gopinath joined the IMF as a highly respected scholar and proved to be a “exceptional intellectual leader” that includes the pandemic and global shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Gita has explicitly maneuvered the fund’s analytical and policy, striving to provide the highest standards of rigorous analysis during complex periods of high uncertainty and rapid changes in the global economic environment,” Georgieva said.
Gopinas also oversees multilateral surveillance and analysis work for the fund on fiscal and monetary policy, debt and international trade.
Gopinath said he is grateful for the “once in a lifetime opportunity” to work for the IMF.
“I’m now back to my academia roots, where I look forward to continuing to promote the research frontiers of international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges and train the next generation of economists,” she said in a statement.
