Brad W. Setser is the Whitney Shepardson senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His expertise includes global trade and capital flows, financial vulnerability analysis, and sovereign debt restructuring. He regularly blogs on Follow the Money.
Setser served as a senior advisor to the United States Trade Representative from 2021 to 2022, working on the resolution of a number of trade disputes. From 2011 to 2015, he served as the deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis at the US Treasury , where he worked on Europe’s financial crisis, currency policy, financial sanctions, commodity shocks, and Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. He also worked during that time as a director for international economics on the staff of the National Economic Council and the National Security Council.
Setser is the author of Sovereign Wealth and Sovereign Power (CFR, 2008) and the co-author, with Nouriel Roubini, of Bailouts and Bail-Ins: Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Economies (Peterson Institute, 2004). His work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Finance and Development, Global Governance, and the Georgetown Journal of International Law, among others.
At CFR, Setser was a senior fellow from 2016 to 2020, a fellow from 2007 to 2009, and an international affairs fellow in 2003. He has also been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master's from Sciences-Po Paris, and a master’s and PhD in international relations from Oxford University.