Yellen sees no ‘showrunner’ on G7 Ukraine loan backed by income from Russian assets

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday she did not see “any obstructionists” in her discussions with G7 finance ministers over a larger loan to backed Ukraine. with income from Russia’s frozen sovereign assets.

Yellen told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a meeting of G7 finance leaders that not all technical details of the loan proposal needed to be resolved by the end of this week.

“I think things look pretty good” for agreeing on the loan concept, Yellen said after several bilateral meetings on the first day of a two-day financial summit in the southern resort town of Stresa. northern Italy.

“I don’t see anything yet that I would consider a stopping point, but there are some issues that we need to address and people are going to have to be flexible to reach common ground,” Yellen said.

The US Treasury Secretary is pushing his counterparts in the negotiations to agree to withdraw revenues from about $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets to support a larger loan to Ukraine.

But it is clear that no firm details about the loan will emerge from the Stresa talks.

“I’m pretty hopeful we can basically agree that this is a concept that we can take further in the next few weeks and present to the leaders for their consideration in June.”

G7 leaders will meet next month in Puglia, southern Italy. The group of industrial democracies includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy.

Yellen also told Reuters there were “differing views” among G7 finance ministers on the level of concern about China’s industrial overcapacity, which she said would threaten China’s viability. of companies in a market-oriented economy.

On the first day of the G7 meeting, several ministers expressed concerns about a potential trade war after the US imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods, but the finance ministers of Germany, France and the United States Host Italy said a common front was needed to counter China’s growing export power.

“I think there is a common view that we should express common concerns about China,” she said. “It is China’s overall macroeconomic strategy that is very worrying and has a negative impact.”