Janet Yellen, US Treasury secretary, speaks on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Staff (IBEW) 357 union hall following a tour of the JATC training facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.
Ronda Churchill | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outlined an ambitious agenda on Monday to deal with key aspects of the worldwide economic recovery only weeks before a possible U.S. government shutdown over congressional funding disputes.
“We now have an initiative to enable the World Bank and the opposite multilateral development banks to greatly expand their provision of resources and to mobilize private capital for climate change,” Yellen told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an interview.
Speaking from the United Nations General Assembly in Recent York City, the Treasury secretary added that Russia’s continued war with Ukraine is putting a strain on global food prices, especially after its July exit from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which had allowed Ukrainian grain exports to soundly transit via Black Sea ports.
“Russia’s continuing, brutal war in Ukraine is having a really adversarial impact,” Yellen said. “And we’re spending time this week discussing food prices and what we will do to alleviate hunger and shortages of food.”
Yellen also said the Biden administration is closely monitoring gas prices to make sure affordability for Americans. Oil prices rose to their highest level of the yr last week, prompting some experts to predict that crude oil might reach $100 a barrel by the tip of the yr.
“My expectation is that they are going to stabilize, but we’ll just regulate it,” she said of oil prices.
China’s growth after ending Covid pandemic-related lockdowns, though slower than expected, is a contributor to the lift in oil prices, said Yellen. But its weakened economy, together with Germany’s, was driving her deal with the worldwide economy on the UN event.
The Treasury secretary also said a possible U.S. government shutdown could risk the momentum of the domestic economy, which is on the upswing, in accordance with recent indicators. The producer price index in August increased a seasonally adjusted 0.7%, the most important single-month increase since June 2022. The core PPI stayed in step with estimates.
“There’s absolutely no reason for a shutdown and we would like Congress to do its work of funding the federal government and keeping it open,” said Yellen. The deadline for Congress to pass a seamless resolution to maintain the federal government open is Sept. 30.
Yellen spoke a day after two key voting blocs within the House Republican caucus reached a tentative agreement on a partisan bill to fund the federal government until the tip of October, in exchange for cuts to domestic spending and stricter border controls.
Yet inside hours of announcing the deal, greater than a half-dozen far-right conservatives within the House rejected the compromise, making it difficult to see a path by which such a bill could pass with only GOP votes, given the party’s razor thin majority within the House.
Despite the looming threats at home and abroad, Yellen was optimistic concerning the U.S. economy and the American labor market.
“I do not see any signs that the economy is susceptible to a downturn,” Yellen said. “And that is one of the best of all worlds, to see continued strength within the economy, an excellent strong labor market and inflation moving down. And that’s what we’re seeing.”