Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to give a Thursday speech about the U.S.’s economic relationship with China, the Treasury Department said Tuesday, amid tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
The secretary will detail the Biden administration’s “principal objectives” in its relations with China, the Treasury said, including a level playing field for U.S. workers and businesses.
Her speech comes as the U.S. and its allies are reportedly grappling with how to pare economic relationships with China, while preserving broader trade and investment flows.
“Secretary Yellen will underscore that in its bilateral relationship with China, the United States proceeds with confidence about the enduring fundamental strength of our economy and the historic investments made by the Biden Administration over the past two years in domestic manufacturing, stronger supply chains, and America’s leadership in cutting-edge fields,” the Treasury said.
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As The Wall Street Journal reported, of the Group of Seven advanced democracies, the U.S. has been pushing the most urgently to reorient the global economy away from China. New laws enacted last year, for example, offer major subsidies to lure key clean-energy
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“Secretary Yellen will also detail the administration’s principal objectives in our economic relationship with China,” the Treasury added.
“First, securing our national security interests and protecting human rights, including taking targeted actions to advance our vital interests where needed. Second, seeking healthy, and mutually beneficial, economic competition with a level playing field for American workers and businesses, including by working with our allies to press China on its unfair economic practices.
“Finally, cooperating where we can as the world’s two largest economies on global issues — from enhancing communication on the global macroeconomy to fighting climate change and addressing debt distress in low-income and middle-income countries.”
U.S.-China relations have been disrupted by the downing of a Chinese spy balloon that transited the U.S. in February, and by tensions over a meeting in the U.S. between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Meanwhile, even as worries about a split between Washington and Beijing cast a pall over the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang last weekend called for stronger cooperation between U.S. and Chinese economic officials.
“For the largest major economies, at this point, communication and policy cooperation is even more important,” Yi said, during a discussion at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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