After leaving the RGE in 2007, Setser became a fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2011, he moved to the United States Department of the Treasury, where he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Analysis where he worked on Europe's financial crisis, U.S. currency policy, financial sanctions, commodity shocks, and Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.
[citation needed] In 2015, he returned as the Steven A. Tananbaum senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
[3][4][5][6] Setser has also written opinion pieces including in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal on U.S. international economic policy.
[7][8] In November 2020, Setser was named a member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.