Importance of US-India ties shown with Janet Yellen’s latest trip amid China tensions
- Yellen’s frequent stops in India – her third trip in nine months – signal the importance Washington places on that relationship at a time of tensions with China
- Yellen’s trip comes soon after she spent a week in China, meeting the nation’s finance ministry and discussing mutual trade restrictions and national security concerns
On the heels of a trip to Beijing, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is back in India for the third time in nine months, this time to meet finance ministers from the G20 about global economic challenges like the increased threat of debt defaults facing low-income countries.
Yellen told reporters in Gandhinagar, the capital of the western Indian state of Gujarat, on Sunday that she was trying to foster warming relations between the US and India. She also plans a stop in Hanoi, Vietnam, to address supply chain reliability, clean energy transition and other matters of economic resilience.
Yellen said her goals for her time in India were to press for debt restructuring in developing countries in economic distress, push to modernise global development banks to make them more climate-focused and deepen the ever-growing US-India relationship.
Yellen’s frequent stops in the country signal the importance of that relationship at a time of tensions with China.
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Biden, Modi hail new era of US-India ties and tout deals
India’s long-standing relationship with Russia has also loomed as the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine continues despite US and allied countries’ efforts to sanction and economically bludgeon Russia’s economy. India, which chairs the G20 this year, has not taken part in the efforts to punish Russia and maintains energy trade with that country despite a G7 agreed-upon price cap on Russian oil, which has seen some success in slowing Russia’s economy.