US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, on Sunday, said that she will use her India to further strengthen ‘Friendshoring’ ties with India. She also reiterated the US effort to combat Russia’s efforts to evade US sanctions. At the same time, she expressed US’s eagerness to work with China on tackling global challenges.
Janet was addressing a press conference at the sidelines of the Finance Minister-Central Bank Governor (FMCBG) meeting under India’s G20 presidency.
“Friendshoring is an important foundation of our approach to increasing the resilience of our supply chains, and, we see India as an indispensable partner in that. More broadly, I hope to use this trip to deepen what is already a significant relationship with respect to friendshoring that India and the US has. Our ties continue to deepen,” she said. ‘Friendshoring’ is a growing trade practice where supply chain networks are focused on countries regarded as political and economic allies.
Further, she said that the Us is India’s largest export market. Bilateral trade between India and the US reached an all-time high and she is looking for it to even grow more. “Frindshoring will be an important area of discussion in the next portion of our trip to Vietnam. So, I aim to strengthen our bilateral economic ties and behaviour by the private sector is an important part of freindshoring, and we are seeing the continuing announcement of investments in India as an excellent place to be producing and exporting to the US,” she said.
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Yellen highlighted the deliberations between her and the new economic leadership team of China last week. During the meeting, she emphasised the importance of both countries working together on the global challenges that face us. “There is much more work to do. But I believe this trip was an important start. I am eager to build on the groundwork that we laid in Beijing to mobilise further action,” she said.
Talking about tariff issue put in place during Trump administration, she said that there were put in place, because there were concerns with unfair trade practices on Chinese side. She said that these concerns are still there. “Perhaps it is time we could have made progress, but I would say it is premature to use in our effort to de-escalate this time,” she said.
On Ukraine issue, she said that US led coalition’s support for Ukraine is unequivocal. “We will also continue to cut off Russia’s access to the military equipment and technologies that it needs to wage war against Ukraine,” she said. India has sought a largely neutral stance on the war, generally declining to blame Russia for the invasion Moscow launched in February last year, urging a diplomatic solution and sharply boosting its purchases of Russian oil even as Western nations seek to squeeze Moscow.
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Yellen also laid out number of next steps for the evolution of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, but said that any exploration of capital increases for the institutions can only be considered after implementing reforms aimed at expanding their role beyond poverty reduction to tackle global challenges, such as climate change and pandemics. “We should build better banks, not just bigger banks,” Yellen said.
Talking about global tax deal she said that United States was committed to implementing a global corporate minimum tax deal reached in 2021. “We are very close to reaching agreement on the technical details of that reallocation, and we are committed to doing so soon,” she said.