Yellen calls on US, China to play nicely with economies

investmentnews.com:

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said competition between the world’s biggest economies is not a “winner-take-all” situation, and called for both sides to manage their rivalry with a fair set of rules.

Yellen’s comments were delivered Friday during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang as she made a long-anticipated trip to Beijing, aimed at finding some common ground between the two superpowers sparring on everything from trade to Taiwan’s security. 

“We seek healthy economic competition that is not winner-take-all but that, with a fair set of rules, can benefit both countries over time,” the Treasury chief told China’s No. 2 official, adding that US actions to protect national security should be “targeted.” 

Yellen’s high-stakes visit comes as the US and China are locked in a tit-for-tat trade war that ramped up last year with US export controls on semiconductors and chipmaking equipment. 

The Biden administration is preparing an executive order curbing US outbound investment in China, which could come as soon as July and cover certain investments in sensitive technologies including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. 

President Xi Jinping’s government imposed controls on two critical minerals used in advanced technologies days before her arrival. Earlier in the day, Yellen told a roundtable of US business people operating in China she was “concerned” by those controls.  

The US Defense Department announced it was invoking the Defense Production Act to boost domestic mining and processing of gallium and germanium, Reuters reported, citing a Pentagon spokesperson. 

Yellen’s trip is aimed at building longer-term communication channels with the Chinese government’s new economic team rather