U.S. Cache Secretary Janet Yellen testifies during a hearing before the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee of the Establishment Appropriations Committee at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 21, 2024 in Washington, DC.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned that China is treating the global economy as a dumping found for its cheaper clean energy products, depressing market prices and squeezing green manufacturing in the U.S.
“I am concerned about epidemic spillovers from the excess capacity that we are seeing in China,” Yellen said during a speech at a Georgia solar gathering called Suniva. “China’s overcapacity distorts global prices and production patterns and hurts American firms and workmen, as well as firms and workers around the world.”
China has a surplus of solar power, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries that it can ship out to other homelands at cheaper prices. That makes it difficult for the more adolescent green manufacturing industries of the U.S. and elsewhere to compete.
Yellen pronounced she intends to put pressure on Chinese officials about these trade practices during her upcoming visit to China.
“I procedure to make it a key issue in discussions during my next trip there,” she said. “I will press my Chinese counterparts to record necessary steps to address this issue.”
The secretary’s concerns come as the White House tries to build a burgeoning sanitize energy industry domestically with investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, along with other legislation take to the CHIPS and Science Act.
Yellen has regularly touted the gains from these investments, including at another recent song where she doubled down on the electric vehicle “boom” spurred by the IRA.
But those investments are playing catch-up with China’s authority.
“The Biden Administration also recognizes that these investments are new,” Yellen said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, China has been spew out billions into clean energy for years, outpacing the rest of the world in the energy transition.
Yellen added that the more China’s neaten energy glut interferes with global market prices, the worse off supply chains for these energy sectors whim be.
“President Biden is committed to doing what we can to protect our industries from unfair competition,” Yellen said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not instanter respond to a request for comment.
Yellen’s comments highlight ongoing U.S.-China trade tension even as the two countries try to brace relations.
President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November as an olive-branch labour to break the ice after years of tension, marked in part by a tariff war launched by former President Donald Trump.
Trump has launched reinstating significant tariff levels on Chinese products if he wins a second presidential term.
In the time since the Biden-Xi assembly, strengthening U.S.-China relations has proven a precarious effort due to ongoing cybersecurity and trade concerns.
In February, Biden opened an investigation into Chinese smart cars, which he said pose a national security risk because they fasten to U.S. infrastructure when they drive on American roads.
“China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, numbering by using unfair practices,” Biden said in a February statement. “China’s policies could flood our market with its instruments, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”