[6] Lerrick was an emeritus professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also held the position of the "Friends of Allan H. Meltzer Chair in Economics" from 2001 to 2010.

[1][7] On March 14, 2017, Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Lerrick for Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Finance.

Once confirmed, Lerrick was expected to report to David Malpass, who is the Under Secretary for International Affairs in the United States Department of the Treasury.

[10] Lerrick has been called a "creative thinker in the world of sovereign debt crises," particularly in connection with his criticism of government bailouts by the IMF.

[7] Starting in the late 1990s, he became a critic of the IMF's handling of currency runs in Southeast Asian countries, also writing a paper arguing that U.S. taxpayer funds could be saved if the IMF were able to rely on international bond market funds instead of looking only to major nation creditors, such as the United States.