(Bloomberg) -- US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday condemned isolationism and said Washington’s global economic leadership supports economies around the world and benefits American people.
“From day one, we rejected isolationism that made America and the world worse off,” she said in Washington, a thinly veiled criticism of former President Donald Trump two weeks out from the election.
While Yellen has made the case for US engagement before, her comments also come as the world’s economic leaders gather in Washington for the World Bank and International Monetary Funds annual meetings, where the outcome of the vote will have significant impacts on geopolitics, trade and inflation.
Trump has been touting tariffs as his preferred economic policy tool and promising to impose a broad swath of protectionist measures if he returns to the White House, which some economists have predicted will drive prices higher in the US and have unpredictable global impacts.
His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is running in the shadow of a Biden administration that has pursued a narrower set of sanctions, export controls and industrial policies, as well as sustained and even strengthened Trump-era tariffs on China, all of which have drawn criticism from the IMF as well.
In her remarks, Yellen also praised America’s strong economic performance, calling it a “key engine of global growth.” She added that the US labor market has seen a “historic” recovery, while economic growth has also been almost twice as fast as most other advanced economies this year and last.
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