About the Expert
Expert Bio
Brad W. Setser is the Steven A. Tananbaum senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His expertise includes macroeconomics, global capital flows, financial vulnerability analysis, sovereign debt restructuring, and the management of financial crises. He regularly blogs at Follow the Money.
Setser served as the deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis in the U.S. Treasury from 2011 to 2015, where he worked on Europe’s financial crisis, currency policy, financial sanctions, commodity shocks, and Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. He was previously the director for international economics, serving jointly on the staff of the National Economic Council and the National Security Council.
He is the author of Sovereign Wealth and Sovereign Power (CFR, 2008) and the coauthor, with Nouriel Roubini, of Bailouts and Bail-ins: Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Economies (Peterson Institute, 2004), which draws lessons from emerging market financial crises between 1995 and 2003. His work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Finance and Development, Global Governance and Georgetown Journal of International Law, among others.
Setser was an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2003, and a fellow from 2007 to 2009. He also has been the director of global research for Roubini Global Economics and a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. He holds a BA from Harvard University, a masters from Sciences-Po, and an MA and PhD in international relations from Oxford University.
Affiliations:
Exante Data, senior advisor
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Current Projects
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Watch the banking system's acces to lira funding as Turks shift toward foreign currency deposits...
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So long as the bulk of China's imports from the United States (and many others) are bought by state firms, China has the ability to manage its trade. The management isn't new. What's new is Trump's implicit willingness to accept managed trade so long as the trade is managed in a way that is judged to help the United States.
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Any economy that saves 45 percent of GDP will tend to run a current account surplus, China included. Keeping its current account surplus down takes extraordinary (though largely off-budget) fiscal effort. And faster financial account liberalization almost certainly would result in a depreciation and push China back toward surplus.
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The pharmaceutical industry's tax strategies appear to have a large impact on the trade data. There isn't any other obvious explanation for why the (goods) deficit in pharmaceuticals exceeds the surplus in civil aircraft..
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The relatively generous settlement with the sales-tax backed bonds (COFINA) has reduced the funds available for everyone else.
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China's surplus is down relative to its pre-global crisis level, both in dollar terms and as a percent of China's own GDP. The same cannot be said of China's neighbors. East and Southeast Asia are still a substantial exporters of savings to the rest of the world.
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How the fragile macro-economic base of China’s external adjustment could intersect with China 2025 and generate a new "China" shock.
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If Trump wants to set targets for China’s imports, he should focus on its imports of manufactures—not on getting tweetable deliverables out of the soybeans and oil that China will import (from someone) no matter what…
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The current account has improved, but Turkey's underlying financial vulnerabilities remain.
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Worry about China’s slowing economy in 2019, not its balance of payments…