Christopher Smart is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Christopher Smart was a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on the interaction of global financial markets and international economic policy. As an investor and policymaker, Smart has spent the past three decades engaged in key issues of global economic affairs and foreign policy from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the European financial crisis to the 21st century challenges around global data flows. Currently, Smart is the head of macroeconomics and geopolitical research at Barings.
From 2013 to 2015 he was the special assistant to the president at the National Economic Council and the National Security Council, where he was a principal adviser to President Obama on trade, investment, and a wide range of global economic issues. Prior to that, he spent four years as deputy assistant secretary of the treasury, where he led the Obama administration’s response to the euro crisis and designed U.S. engagement on financial policy across Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
Before entering government, Smart was director of international investments at Pioneer Investments where he managed top-performing emerging markets and international portfolios. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked in Moscow, advising Russian government agencies on economic policy and financial market reform. Earlier in his career, he was a journalist in St. Petersburg, Florida and Paris, France.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.
To help expand and sustain America’s middle class, U.S. foreign policy makers need a new agenda that will rebuild trust at home and abroad.
As millions of Americans contend with lost wages and savings due to the coronavirus, the challenge of making U.S. foreign policy work harder for the middle class is even more vital.
While the U.S. economy has been growing and unemployment rates have fallen, too many Americans still struggle to sustain a middle-class lifestyle. Are changes to U.S. foreign policy required to better advance the economic well-being of America’s middle class?
The global financial system is like a giant swimming pool and turbulent waters are tossing around the swimmers. Moreover, undercurrents that have been keeping the U.S. dollar stronger for longer are likely to be disrupted as relative growth expectations.
America’s allies worry about the reliability of U.S. engagement to shape the global financial system. Current trends suggest other economies will grow and leave the United States with a declining share of the global economy.
Policymakers need to explore ways to make U.S. foreign policy work better for America’s middle class, even if their economic fortunes depend largely on domestic factors and policies.
The Carnegie Moscow Center hosted Christopher Smart for a roundtable discussion on the current trends in global macroeconomics.
Chinese authorities are now farther than ever from offering an alternative currency the world can trust. Those with longer-term doubts about the dollar will likely give Europe a second look.
Renminbi usage is expanding globally, but the odds that it will become a safe-haven currency like the dollar may depend on broad institutional and political change inside China itself.
While the European economy is much stronger and the political calendar shows fewer potential landmines, investors may not yet fully appreciate that even greater political challenges lie ahead.