U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was interviewed by Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Galloni in Washington, U.S., on April 25, 2024.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday she saw “no obstacles” in discussions with her fellow G7 finance ministers about a larger loan to Ukraine backed by frozen revenues from Russian sovereign assets.
Yellen told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a meeting of Group of Seven financial leaders that not all technical details of the loan proposal would need to be worked out by the end of the week.
“I think things are looking pretty good” after several bilateral meetings to agree on the loan concept, Yellen said on the first day of a two-day financial summit in the northern Italian resort of Stresa.
“I don’t see anything that I think would be a hindrance, but there are issues that we need to address and people have to be flexible in order to reach consensus,” Yellen said.
The U.S. Treasury secretary has been pushing his counterparts in negotiations to agree to bring forward proceeds from about $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets to support more loans to Ukraine.
But it is clear that the specific details of the loan will not be revealed during the Stresa talks.
“I’m very hopeful that we can agree on something substantial and we can look at the concept further over the next few weeks and present it to leaders for their consideration in June.”
G7 leaders are scheduled to meet next month in Puglia, southern Italy. The group of industrial democracies includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy.
Yellen also told Reuters there was a “range of views” among G7 finance ministers about the extent of China’s industrial overcapacity concerns, which she said threatened the viability of companies in market-driven economies.
On the first day of the G7 meeting, some ministers expressed concern about a possible trade war after the United States imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods, but the finance ministers of Germany, France and host Italy said a common front was needed to deal with China’s growing export strength.
“I think there’s a general consensus that we should express a common set of concerns to China,” she said. “It is China’s overall macroeconomic strategy that is worrisome and has negative spillover effects.”
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