Indian American Economist Daleep Singh, Biden’s Architect of Russia Sanctions, to Return to the White House
- He will resume his previous role as deputy national security adviser for international economics.
Daleep Singh, the key architect of the Biden administration’s economic sanctions on Russia, is returning to the White House to his previous role as deputy national security adviser for international economics. The position, which reports to both the NSC and the National Economic Council, is one of the most important in the White House. The Indian American will take over from Mike Pyle, who leaves at the end of the month. The great grand-nephew of Daleep Singh Saund, the first Asian-American elected to the U.S. Congress, has been working as the chief economist for PGIM Fixed Income.
Axios notes that Singh’s return to his previous post, “will allow him to pick up where he left off in April of 2022 — looking for innovative ways to punish Russia and help support Ukraine.” He will also help coordinate the U.S. position at both the G7 and G20 summits.
Singh was appointed as Biden’s Deputy National Security Advisor in February 2021. He previously served in the Obama administration as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for international affairs and acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began nearly two years ago, he quickly become the public face of the administration’s sanctions against Moscow. He was seen at the White House press briefings and his meetings and discussions with the president have been widely reported in the media. He made several media appearances to talk about sanctions since his first appearance at the White House press podium in February 2022. He also became a key author of the White House’s rolling sanctions scheme, which was designed to serve as both a deterrent and now a punishment for Putin’s actions in Ukraine,” Politico noted at the time in its West Wing Playbook.
Singh came to the White House from the New York Federal Reserve, where he played a critical leadership role in the emergency facilities the Fed launched in response to COVID-19. Before his tenure at the Treasury Department, he worked for Goldman Sachs, with a focus on U.S. interest rates and currency markets, from 2003 to 2007, and again from 2008 to 2011. He was also a partner at Element Capital Management from 2007 to 2008. He is a former adjunct senior fellow at the Center for New American Security and the Atlantic Council. He was also an adjunct professor of geoeconomics at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Born in Olney, Maryland and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, he holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in economics and public policy and a master of business administration/master of public administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, with a focus on international economics.