By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. president Joe Biden plans to name Jay Shambaugh as U.S. Treasury’s next undersecretary of international affairs. This was a White House official stated on Friday.

Shambaugh, an expert on international monetary and fiscal policy, is expected to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She will work as the Treasury’s chief diplomat in coordination with foreign counterparts.

Andy Baukol is a Treasury career assistant secretary who has served as an acting undersecretary. He leads Treasury’s negotiations with the G7/G20 groups of major economies.

David Lipton is a former Treasury advisor and senior Treasury adviser. David Lipton, a senior Treasury adviser and former No. 2 at the International Monetary Fund has also been helping Treasury to direct its international policies over the last year. These efforts included an unprecedented distribution of $650 million IMF monetary resources to member nations and a global deal for 15% corporate minimum taxes.

Shambaugh was nominated as an international representative to support financial sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The administration also seeks to coordinate policies that will sustain COVID-19 recovery efforts and combat inflation.

Shambaugh, who will serve as the undersecretary of international affairs, would supervise the Treasury’s major shareholdings at the IMF, the World Bank and other institutions that are vital to the recovery process following the conflict in Ukraine. These institutions also want to urge countries to accelerate actions to restructure the debts in poor countries. This is a warning sign of increasing default risk.

Despite objections by China and differences with Russia regarding geopolitical risk, the G20’s meeting of finance officials failed to strengthen its debt restructuring structure.

Shambaugh was a member of White House Council of Economic Advisers between 2015 and 2017. He also served previously as chief economist and senior economist on the CEA staff. His service on the CEA transition team of Biden’s administration included a number of years.

As a tenured professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs since 2013, Shambaugh’s research has focused on the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows and trade flows, according to his website https://iiep.gwu.edu/jay-c-shambaugh.

Shambaugh also studies international reserves, exposure of country balance sheets to exchange rates and the Euro area crisis that occurred a decade back.

Shambaugh was also the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project leader from 2017 to 2020. This group of business and academic leaders promotes greater participation in economic growth. A doctorate in economics is his from University of California Berkeley.