White House weighing former Obama adviser for senior Treasury job

Jay Shambaugh, who was a key economic adviser in President Barack Obama's White House, is under consideration to be Treasury under secretary for international affairs, the agency’s top financial diplomat, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Shambaugh, who served as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2015 to 2017, is a professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University and a nonresident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

The position, one of the most senior Treasury jobs, has been vacant since the start of the Biden administration despite Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s packed international agenda, including an effort to advance a global tax agreement.

Several other contenders were under consideration for the job last year, including Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a former chief economist at the State Department, and Marisa Lago, a former Obama Treasury official who is now under secretary for international trade at the Commerce Department. But the White House didn't put forward a nominee for the position, which has been filled on an acting basis by Andy Baukol, a career civil servant and Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary for monetary policy.

The White House declined to comment as did a Treasury Department spokesperson. Shambaugh had no comment.

Prior to becoming a member of Obama’s economic council, Shambaugh served as a CEA staff economist focusing on international economics, and later as chief economist. After leaving the CEA, he spent three years as director of the Hamilton Project, a progressive economic think tank affiliated with Brookings. He also served on the Biden administration's CEA transition team.

Shambaugh’s research has focused on the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows and trade flows, as well as international reserves holdings and the global effects of U.S. fiscal policy.