Who is he?

Nathan Sheets has been the U.S. Treasury Department’s Under Secretary for International Affairs since his confirmation in September 2014. Previously, he was the Global Head of International Economics at Citigroup. Before that, he spent 18 years at the Federal Reserve Board as Director of the Division of International Finance and Economist to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). He also served as senior advisor to the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund from 2006 to 2007.

Sheets has a PhD in economics from MIT, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Nathan Sheets, Treasury’s Under Secretary for International Affairs. Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Government Work.

Why is he in the news?

Sheets is Treasury’s point person for international economic affairs, a particularly important position as competition to shape economic architecture heats up in the Asia Pacific.

In January, he wrote a CNBC commentary on infrastructure investment and the role of the New Development Bank (commonly referred to as the BRICS bank) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), effectively Treasury’s most comprehensive public response to date on the emergence of these two new Chinese-backed multilateral development banks. The United States had previously drawn criticism for alleged behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent its allies from joining the AIIB.

Calling multilateral development banks the “bedrock” of global development architecture, Sheets defended the U.S.-led global financial architecture as a collection of best practices, ranging from transparency to social safeguards, which have benefited from decades of evolution. He said that the United States welcomes these new institutions, so long as they “share the international community’s strong commitment to complementing the existing institutions and maintaining time-tested, and ever-improving, principles and standards.”

What can we expect from him?

Sheets sees many parallels between the problems he confronted as Director of the Fed’s International Finance Division, ranging from currency and financial stability to problems in international financial institutions and the Eurozone.

Sheets, who is not afraid to make strong statements on difficult issues, has wasted no time weighing in. In December 2014, speaking on Japan’s role in global growth, he urged the “reinvigorated application of all three arrows” of Abenomics: monetary easing, fiscal policy, and structural reform. He has also urged the European Central Bank to do more to stimulate growth.