Judy Shelton, whose nomination to the Federal Reserve was blocked by the Senate, has been appointed as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The Treasury confirmed that Shelton will advise Bessent on currency policy, “with a particular focus on evaluating financial conditions in China,” according to a statement released by the department.
Shelton is not widely regarded as a China expert, with her published work focusing largely on monetary systems and Soviet economics.
She authored “The Coming Soviet Crash” in 1989, followed by “Money Meltdown,” a book arguing for a unified international monetary regime, in 1994.
Before joining the Treasury, Shelton served as a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, a free market think tank, and previously held a position at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
She holds a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Utah, bringing an academic grounding in economics to the advisory role.
The Treasury justified the appointment by pointing to her analytical background, stating: “Throughout her career, she has specialized in analyzing the internal monetary and financial conditions of nations and their impact on exchange rates.”
A bipartisan group of senators rejected President Donald Trump’s 2019 nomination of Shelton as a Fed governor, citing concerns over her views on Fed independence, her support for the gold standard, and her questioning of whether the US needed a central bank at all.
The appointment arrives during what appears to be a period of significant personnel instability at the Treasury Department, with a recent Wall Street Journal report cataloguing seven Senate-confirmed officials who departed the department through the end of August.
Only one of those seven vacated positions has since been filled, raising questions about the department’s capacity to operate at full senior-level strength.
Bessent recently named David Zervos, former chief market strategist at Jefferies, as a counselor, carrying the same job title as Shelton’s new role within the department.
Crucially, neither Shelton nor Zervos require Senate confirmation for their counselor positions, allowing Bessent to bring both advisors on board without congressional approval.