Treasury won’t share daily economic briefing with State
Each morning, the U.S. Treasury Department compiles a daily economic briefing for the president, but Treasury recently denied the State Department’s request to see the product. The request for the daily brief came from the State Department’s new chief economist, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, who became the first official to hold that title when Secretary of State ...
Each morning, the U.S. Treasury Department compiles a daily economic briefing for the president, but Treasury recently denied the State Department’s request to see the product.
The request for the daily brief came from the State Department’s new chief economist, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, who became the first official to hold that title when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton created the position in February. She made the request to her counterpart, Jan Eberly, Treasury’s assistant secretary for economic policy, State Department and Treasury Department sources confirmed to The Cable.
Treasury told State that the product goes only to the president, not to any other departments, so the decision to decline State’s request was not specific to Foggy Bottom, one official said. That’s different from the Presidential Daily Brief, for example, which is given to other high-level officials, including Clinton. The Treasury’s product is not intelligence-based, but more a wrap-up of how Treasury sees the economic and trade news of the day.
A Treasury official told The Cable that that there is a regular exchange of economic data and analysis and close collaboration between Treasury and State. The official pointed to Rediker’s invitation to Eberly last month to conduct a web briefing from State for Foreign Service officers at U.S. embassies on the state of the U.S. economy.
State Department spokesman Philippe Reines also told The Cable that overall, the economic information-sharing relationship between State and Treasury is robust.
"Secretary Clinton has made economic statecraft a top priority, including naming the department’s first chief economist. So State & Treasury are fully synched on a wide range of economic issues of mutual interest and importance to the United States, including between the secretaries themselves," Reines said. "That obviously includes the annual Strategic & Economic Dialogue with China, as well as a constant exchanging of reports and market data to help both agencies execute their missions."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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