2024-04-07 02:25:33
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will head to China on Thursday, for the second time in less than a year, to discuss Beijing’s trade practices that Washington considers “unfair.”
The Secretary of the Treasury will begin this visit, which will last from April 3 to 9, in Guangzhou (south), where she will meet with the heads of American companies located there and local officials before heading to Beijing.
In this city, she will meet with Vice Premier of the State Council, He Feng, before meeting in Beijing with her counterpart, Lan Fuan, Prime Minister, Li Qiang, and the Governor of the Central Bank, Pan Gongsheng.
This visit comes only eight months after her previous trip, which helped ease the severe tensions experienced by the world’s two largest economic powers, especially thanks to the establishment of bilateral working groups dedicated to economic and financial issues.
This time, Janet Yellen hopes to discuss “unfair trade practices” and specifically point out “the consequences of Chinese overproduction for the global economy,” according to the Treasury Department.
Washington is particularly concerned about the rise in low-priced Chinese exports in sectors such as electric cars, lithium batteries, and solar panels, which may prevent the emergence of an American industry in this field.
Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, Jay Shambaugh, indicated to Agence France-Presse that this situation has already been witnessed by the United States, and “it is not something that we will just observe without doing anything.”
He added, “We want to see developments in a number of areas,” especially “setting production goals that actually exceed what the global market can absorb.”
If trade measures are to be taken, it is important for Beijing to realize that it is not “a set of measures against China,” according to Shambaugh.
At the end of 2023, Yellen confirmed that Washington would continue to demand that China’s economic policies and policy-making be clearer, noting that the world’s second-largest economy “is too important to base its growth on exports.”
This comes as the difficulties witnessed in the real estate market or the indebtedness of local communities raise fears of the repercussions of the shocks shaking the country at the global level.
But economic relations between the two countries have become, according to a Treasury Department official, “certainly more solid now than they were two years ago,” citing a simulation they conducted together “about the consequences of the bankruptcy of a regular bank in either country.”
With the US elections approaching, “neither party intends to begin bilateral negotiations or initiatives,” according to Patricia Kim, a researcher at the Brookings Institution.
Janet Yellen’s previous visit to Beijing aroused a lot of interest in China.
Last week, the state-run China Daily noted in an editorial that Janet Yellen is known for her “practical and rather optimistic stances” regarding Sino-US relations.
The Treasury Secretary opposes “anti-China hawks in Washington,” according to the newspaper, which considered her the right person to play a “mediating role” thanks to the trust she gained from her Chinese counterparts.
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2024-04-07 02:25:33