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President Trump sent U.S. troops to the border with Mexico to supplement the work of authorities there. President Biden pledges a new approach as pressures mount along the boundary.
About the Expert
Expert Bio
Benn Steil is senior fellow and director of international economics, as well as the official historian in residence, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also the founding editor of International Finance, a scholarly economics journal; lead writer of the Council’s Geo-Graphics economics blog; and creator of seven web-based interactives tracking Global Monetary Policy, Global Imbalances, Global Trade, Global Growth, Sovereign Risk, Central Bank Currency Swaps, and China’s Belt and Road. Prior to his joining the Council in 1999, he was director of the International Economics Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He came to the Institute in 1992 from a Lloyd’s of London Tercentenary Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he received his MPhil and DPhil (PhD) in economics. He also holds a BSc in economics summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Steil has written and spoken widely on international finance, monetary policy, financial markets, and economic and diplomatic history. He has testified before the U.S. House, Senate, and CFTC, and is a regular op-ed writer and commentator on CNBC. His most recent book, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, won the New-York Historical Society’s 2019 Barbara and David Zalaznick Prize for best work on American history, won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2018 Douglas Dillon Prize, won the Honorable Mention (runner-up) for the 2019 ASEEES Marshall D. Shulman Prize, was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize, and is ranked number 3 among BookAuthority’s Best Diplomacy Books of All Time. Paul Kennedy in the Wall Street Journal called the book “brilliant,” the New York Times called it “trenchant and timely,” the Financial Times called it “elegant in style and impressive in insights,” and the Christian Science Monitor called it a “gripping, complex, and critically important story that is told with clarity and precision.” His previous book, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order, won the 2013 Spear’s Book Award in Financial History, took third prize in CFR’s 2014 Arthur Ross Book Award competition, was shortlisted for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize (“the world’s most important prize for non-fiction,” according to The Economist), and was the top book-of-the-year choice in Bloomberg’s 2013 poll of global policymakers and CEOs. The Financial Times called the book “a triumph of economic and diplomatic history,” the Wall Street Journal called it “a superb history,” the New York Times called it “the gold standard on its subject,” and Bloomberg’s Tom Keene called it “the publishing event of the season.” An earlier book, Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, won the 2010 Hayek Book Prize.
Affiliations:
- International Finance, editor
- PDQ Enterprises, advisory board
- USREM, advisory board
Featured
The award-winning author of The Battle of Bretton Woods reveals the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan—told with verve, insight, and resonance for today.
This tracker charts the economic growth performance through time of ninety-one countries around the globe.
This tracker shows how the Belt and Road Initiative has changed countries’ bilateral economic relationships with China over time.
The CFR Global Imbalances Tracker can be used to gauge, through time, the vulnerability of individual countries and the global economy to the buildup of imbalances in the current account.
CFR’s Global Monetary Policy Tracker compiles data from 54 countries around the world to highlight significant global trends in monetary policy. Who is tightening policy? Who is loosening policy? And what is the policy stance of the world as a whole?
The CFR Sovereign Risk Tracker can be used to gauge the vulnerability of emerging markets to default on external debt.
Current Projects
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Michael Pettis, professor of finance at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in Beijing, and coauthor, most recently, of Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace, analyzes what President Xi Jinping’s new “common prosperity” policies mean for China and the global economy.
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Gillian Tett, chair of the editorial board (U.S.) of the Financial Times, is the author of Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life. She discusses what economists miss when studying consumers, businesses, markets, and the wider economy using only massed data and abstract theories. She argues that economics can benefit enormously from anthropological perspectives or perspectives derived from the close-up study of how individuals think and behave in specific group cultures.
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Jeffrey E. Garten, dean emeritus at the Yale School of Management and a former undersecretary of commerce for international trade, is the author of the forthcoming book, Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy. Garten discusses the historical consequences of the Nixon administration’s decision fifty years ago to sever the dollar from its gold backing and the challenges the fiat dollar faces now and going forward.
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Anne Case, professor emeritus of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, and co-author, most recently, of Deaths of Despair and The Future of Capitalism, discusses the policy challenges America faces in maintaining a commitment to private enterprise and open global markets while improving living standards and opportunities for its less well-off.
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Panelists discuss the post-COVID-19 role of the U.S. dollar, options for alternative currencies, and the impact of U.S. economic and foreign policy on both.
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Benn Steil discusses his new book, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War.
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Experts discuss the state of the U.S. financial sector and the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act.
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In Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present. Today, the authors argue, an unprecedentedly liberal global trade regime operates side by side with the most extreme doctrine of monetary nationalism ever contrived—a situation bound to trigger periodic crises. Join Benn Steil for a discussion of his new book and the implications of monetary nationalism for today’s global economy. For more information on Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, visit: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300149241
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The McKinsey Executive Roundtable Series in International Economics is presented by Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Corporate Program.
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Presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Corporate Program.
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This session was part of a three-day symposium during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, cosponsored with the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
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The McKinsey Executive Roundtable Series in International Economics is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Corporate Program.