By David Lawder
PARIS, May 19 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters on Tuesday that the Group of Seven finance leaders’ discussions on curbing global imbalances put a lot of emphasis on confronting China with International Monetary Fund data showing the detrimental impact of its massive export push.
Bessent said he had previously warned Western allies that without trade protections, they faced a flood of Chinese exports including electric vehicles that would damage their economies.
“I had warned the Europeans, and the Australians, and the British, and the Canadians, and Japan, that the U.S. was going to put up a tariff wall, and these high-end Chinese goods cannot be absorbed by the Global South and they’re coming somewhere,” Bessent said in an interview after the meeting. “And unfortunately, I was right.”
Regarding the enforcement of sanctions on Iran, he said European countries needed to take stronger action to close Iranian bank branches, and that Asian countries needed to better police Iran’s tanker shadow fleet to prevent the transfer of oil to non-sanctioned vessels.
(Reporting by David Lawder)
