MSNBC:

Hank Paulson this week suffered his first setback as US Treasury secretary after it emerged that the person he handpicked to run his new strategic economic dialogue with China would be quitting after less than a month in the job.

Deborah Lehr, a former White House official and trade negotiator who was Mr Paulson’s China adviser when he was chairman of Goldman Sachs, is returning to New York to spend more time with her family.

Her decision to step down – less than three weeks after she was appointed special envoy to the strategic economic dialogue and accompanied Mr Paulson to meetings with China’s president and prime minister – astonished China watchers in Washington.