Brad Setser

Economist and analyst specializing in global macroeconomics, capital flows, and sovereign wealth.

Claims

As speaker

Mentioned in

Key positions and views

The U.S. dollar's global dominance is structurally entrenched due to the size of the U.S. deficit and overwhelming private and state-owned investor preference for U.S. assets, despite official de-dollarization efforts by rivals like China and Russia.

Saudi Arabia's economic model is fiscally strained, requiring oil prices near $100/barrel to break even and forcing it to borrow heavily, which increases its financial vulnerability despite high energy revenues.

China strategically uses its economic power for political leverage, such as controlling key industrial exports to demand political compliance, while simultaneously managing a complex, dual-track approach to its U.S. dollar exposure.

The current global energy shock is historically significant, but the financial beneficiaries and geopolitical implications differ from past crises, with North America now a net exporter and military hardware constraints directly affecting foreign policy.

China's current export boom represents a more significant economic shock to Europe than the ongoing oil price shock, indicating a fundamental shift in global trade pressures.

Podcast consensus on Setser

Points of consensus

▶Setser consistently argues that the U.S. dollar's global dominance is structurally secure, pointing to the massive U.S. current account deficit, overwhelming global investor preference for U.S. assets, and the high dollar allocation in key foreign portfolios like Saudi Arabia's PIF and Chinese state banks.Apr 2026

▶He presents a cohesive view of Saudi Arabia's growing fiscal vulnerability, highlighting that its breakeven oil price has surged to around $100/barrel, forcing it to become the emerging world's largest borrower to finance its ambitious projects.Apr 2026

▶A recurring point is that official de-dollarization efforts by countries like China and Russia are a strategic policy choice, but this often masks the continued high dollar exposure within their broader state-controlled financial systems, such as China's state-owned banks.Apr 2026

▶He consistently frames historical events, such as the 1970s petrodollar recycling and subsequent Latin American debt crisis, as direct precedents for understanding current global capital flows and their potential systemic risks.Apr 2026

Points of debate

▶Setser highlights a key tension within China's financial strategy: its official policy of reducing U.S. dollar holdings in foreign reserves (down to 55%) contrasts sharply with the much higher dollar share (around 70%) held by its state-owned banks.Apr 2026

▶He outlines the central conflict facing the oil futures market, which must balance two starkly different scenarios: a potential return to $60/barrel if supply normalizes versus a spike to $150/barrel or more if current disruptions persist.Apr 2026

▶He points to a paradox in the U.S. economy where a massive current account deficit of over $1 trillion, which should theoretically weaken a currency, coexists with and is sustained by a strong U.S. dollar driven by significant overweighting of U.S. assets by global investors.Apr 2026

▶Setser notes a divergence in currency hedging strategies among Asian institutional investors, with Taiwanese and Japanese life insurers reducing their hedges due to high costs, while South Korea's National Pension Service plans to expand its hedging program.Apr 2026

Key themes

▶The Enduring and Structurally-Reinforced Dominance of the U.S. DollarApr 2026

Despite geopolitical narratives of de-dollarization from countries like China and Russia, Setser argues the dollar's role is deeply entrenched. This is driven by the necessity of financing the trillion-dollar U.S. current account deficit and the revealed preference of global private and state-affiliated investors for U.S. assets across safety, yield, and equity categories.

Analysts assessing the future of the U.S. dollar should look beyond the composition of official central bank reserves and focus on the larger, more decisive flows from sovereign wealth funds, state-owned banks, and private retail investors, which show a continued strong bias towards dollar assets.

▶Saudi Arabia's High-Stakes Economic TransformationApr 2026

Setser portrays Saudi Arabia's economic strategy as a high-wire act, with its fiscal breakeven oil price surging from $60 to nearly $100 per barrel. This forces the kingdom to borrow on an unprecedented scale to fund its megaprojects, making it the largest borrower in the emerging world despite high oil revenues.

Saudi Arabia's creditworthiness and the viability of its Vision 2030 plan are now critically dependent on oil prices remaining exceptionally high, creating a new form of economic vulnerability that replaces its previous reliance on petrodollar surpluses.

▶China's Dual-Track Geoeconomic StrategyApr 2026

Setser details China's complex approach to global finance and power. On one hand, it strategically reduces the dollar share in its official reserves as a political statement; on the other, its state-owned banks maintain high dollar exposure. Concurrently, China leverages its control over key industrial products to exert political pressure on other nations.

Investors and policymakers must recognize that China's economic actions are not monolithic; they involve a calculated balance between long-term geopolitical ambitions and the short-term practical realities of operating within a dollar-centric global system.

▶The Interplay of Energy Markets and Military-Industrial Constraints

Setser analyzes the current oil market disruption, noting it represents 20-30% of globally traded oil and benefits a different set of producers than past crises. He connects this resource volatility to geopolitics by highlighting that constrained global supplies of military hardware, like missile interceptors, will force the U.S. and Europe to rethink security commitments and domestic production.

The new geopolitical landscape is defined not just by energy flows, but by the production capacity of the defense-industrial base, suggesting that future conflicts and alliances will be heavily shaped by the availability of critical military systems.

Source episodes

Timeline

1970s

Setser references this decade as a foundational period, marked by oil shocks from the Yom Kippur War and Iranian Revolution. He notes this is when petrodollar recycling through London banks began, contributing to the 1980s debt crisis, and when the U.S. Treasury started masking bond ownership at Saudi Arabia's request.

Mid-1990s to 2000

According to Setser's analysis, this period marks the point where the vast petrodollar wealth accumulated by Saudi Arabia in the 1970s had been largely spent, with its cumulative current account returning to neutral or deficit.

2005

Setser identifies this year as a high-water mark for the U.S. dollar in China's official reserves, at 79%. He frames this as the starting point for China's deliberate, policy-driven diversification away from the dollar in its formal reserve holdings.

Pre-2014

Setser points out that Russia had already begun reducing its U.S. dollar reserve share to 40-50% even before the 2014 annexation of Crimea, indicating a longer-term strategic shift.

Post-2014

Following the conflict in Donbas, Setser states that Russia accelerated its de-dollarization policy, ultimately reducing the U.S. dollar share of its reserves to nearly zero.

Present

Setser's current analysis focuses on a global oil market disruption of 10-15 million barrels per day, Saudi Arabia's breakeven oil price rising to $90-$100, and China's export boom creating a larger economic shock for Europe than the oil price shock.

Suggested prompts

How does the divergence between China's official reserve management and its state banks' portfolios impact its ability to challenge U.S. dollar dominance? &nearr;What are the long-term consequences for emerging markets if Saudi Arabia continues to be the largest borrower to fund its domestic agenda? &nearr;Given the constraints on missile interceptor production, how might U.S. security guarantees to allies in Europe and Asia evolve? &nearr;If global investors are significantly overweight U.S. assets, what specific events could trigger a structural shift away from the dollar, and what would be the leading indicators? &nearr;

Key concepts

US Dollar Dominance 1 ep Saudi Arabian Economy 1 ep Petrodollar Recycling 1 ep Chinese Economic Policy 1 ep Global Oil Markets 1 ep Current Account Imbalances 1 ep Sovereign Wealth Funds 1 ep Foreign Exchange Reserves 1 ep Geopolitical Risk 1 ep

Notable quotes

“a lot of the dollars did not flow into the treasury market. They flowed into bank accounts in London, offshore, effectively euro dollars originating from petro states. And then those got recycled and they got lent in no small part to oil importing emerging economies. And that is sort of viewed as the start of the buildup of the vulnerabilities that led to the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s.”

Brad Setser · Brad Setser on the War in Iran and the Future of the US Dollar | Odd Lots

“The Saudi Public Investment Fund, my friend Alex Etra, has done some work on it. Its international portfolio has a dollar share of 80.”

Brad Setser · Brad Setser on the War in Iran and the Future of the US Dollar | Odd Lots

“China, as a matter of policy, brought its reserves, formal reserve, dollar reserve share down, last disclosed number down to 55% from 79% in 2005.”

Brad Setser · Brad Setser on the War in Iran and the Future of the US Dollar | Odd Lots

“Function of the fact that we have a current account deficit of over a trillion dollars, so we have to sell a trillion of financial assets and we are not selling euro or yen or yuan denominated claims to the world.”

Brad Setser · Brad Setser on the War in Iran and the Future of the US Dollar | Odd Lots

Report last updated: Apr 21, 2026

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