Treasury’s Adeyemo Heads to Columbia With Energy-Sanctions Focus-OxBig News Network

(Bloomberg) — Wally Adeyemo, the number-two official at the Treasury Department, will leave the Biden administration for a role at Columbia University focusing on economic statecraft and energy policy, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Adeyemo, 43, was one of the architects of the sweeping sanctions the US imposed on Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As Janet Yellen’s deputy, he also worked on domestic policy issues, including the administration’s major stimulus packages, the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.

He will have fellowships at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Center on Global Energy Policy, where is expected to focus on the use of economic tools in national security and issues related to energy security.

In the early months of the administration of Joe Biden, Adeyemo presented a policy review that called for an overhaul of the use of sanctions and seemed to presage a reduction in their use as a policy tool.

But in the years that followed, the US ramped up its use of the restrictions, slapping a wide range of limits on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and using them in the Middle East after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

The Biden administration issued more than 8,000 sanctions in four years, twice as many as President Donald Trump did in his first term or President Barack Obama did across his two terms in office, according to a Jan. 8 report from Castellum.ai.

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Adeyemo, who was born in Nigeria, held positions in both the Obama and Biden administrations. Between those, he was the first president of the Obama Foundation and senior adviser at BlackRock Inc. and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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