Yellen says hopes to meet new leaders on possible China trip

WASHINGTON – US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said one of the reasons she hopes to travel to China is to establish contact with “a new group of leaders” as she reiterated calls for the world’s two largest economies to work together on crucial global challenges. 

“We need to get to know one another,” Dr Yellen said, according to excerpts of an interview with MSNBC.

“We need to discuss our disagreements with one another so that we don’t have misunderstandings, don’t misunderstand one another’s intentions,” she said in the interview, set to be broadcast on the network on Wednesday night. 

While Dr Yellen didn’t offer details on any upcoming trip to Beijing, over the past few months she has repeatedly stated her intention to visit. A recent trip to the Chinese capital by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken highlighted the efforts by the Biden administration to reinstate lines of communication with their counterparts.

US-China relations have grown increasingly icier since the Trump administration, with continuing discord over Taiwan, trade, conflicting claims regarding the South China Sea along with sources of tension, including the flight of a Chinese balloon over the US earlier this year.

Both Dr Yellen and top White House officials in recent months have sought to stress that the US is not seeking to decouple from its geopolitical rival but rather de-risk. 

The Biden administration has sought to increase the number of communication channels with China ever since Beijing severed many of these links in protest over then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last summer.

Dr Yellen reiterated that the US is taking, and would continue to take, actions that protect national security interests from threats posed by China even if they carry economic costs, while she appealed again to Beijing to cooperate on shared global concerns.

“We have an obligation to the world as a whole, the two largest economies to cooperate to address challenges that are global in nature, like large overhangs of debt that are holding many countries back now in the aftermath of the pandemic or climate change pandemics, other issues.”

The Treasury chief also spoke about the US economy, reiterating her view that there is a path for inflation to come down in the context of the strong labour market.

“We’re on that path. But it will take time,” she said.  

She also said challenges facing the commercial real estate market are a “problem coming down the line” over the next couple of years, adding that while some banks are likely to be exposed, “this is not likely to be a systemic issue.” BLOOMBERG