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    Yellen Says China Trade Deal Has ‘Hurt American Consumers’

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    The Treasury secretary said an agreement made by the Trump administration, which remains under review, had failed to address fundamental problems between the two countries.WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has cast doubt on the merits of the trade agreement between the United States and China, arguing that it has failed to address the most pressing disputes between the world’s two largest economies and warning that the tariffs that remain in place have harmed American consumers.Ms. Yellen’s comments, in an interview with The New York Times this week, come as the Biden administration is seven months into an extensive review of America’s economic relationship with China. The review must answer the central question of what to do about the deal that former President Donald J. Trump signed in early 2020 that included Chinese commitments to buy American products and change its trade practices.Tariffs that remain on $360 billion of Chinese imports are hanging in the balance, and the Biden administration has said little about the deal’s fate. Trump administration officials tried to create tariffs that would shelter key American industries like car making and aircraft manufacturing from what they described as subsidized Chinese exports.But Ms. Yellen questioned whether the tariffs had been well designed. “My own personal view is that tariffs were not put in place on China in a way that was very thoughtful with respect to where there are problems and what is the U.S. interest,” she said at the conclusion of a weeklong trip to Europe.President Biden has not moved to roll back the tariffs, but Ms. Yellen suggested that they were not helping the economy.“Tariffs are taxes on consumers. In some cases it seems to me what we did hurt American consumers, and the type of deal that the prior administration negotiated really didn’t address in many ways the fundamental problems we have with China,” she said.But reaching any new deal could be hard given rising tensions between the two countries on other issues. The Biden administration warned U.S. businesses in Hong Kong on Friday about the risks of doing business there, including the possibility of electronic surveillance and the surrender of customer data to the authorities.Chinese officials would welcome any unilateral American move to dismantle tariffs, according to two people involved in Chinese policymaking. But China is not willing to halt its broad industrial subsidies in exchange for a tariff deal, they said.Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has sought technological self-reliance for his country and the creation of millions of well-paid jobs through government assistance to Chinese manufacturers of electric cars, commercial aircraft, semiconductors and other products.It might be possible to make some adjustments at the margins of these policies, but China is not willing to abandon its ambitions, said both people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.Academic experts in China share the government’s skepticism that any quick deal can be achieved.“Even if we go back to the negotiating table, it will be tough to reach an agreement,” said George Yu, a trade economist at Renmin University in Beijing.The Trump administration also sought, without success, to persuade Chinese officials to abandon heavy subsidies for high-tech industries. Robert E. Lighthizer, Mr. Trump’s trade representative, ended up imposing tariffs aimed at preventing subsidized Chinese companies from driving American companies out of business.Getting China to Buy American MadeThe United States and China named last year’s pact the Phase 1 agreement, and promised to negotiate a second phase. But that never happened.The tariffs have played a particularly large role in the auto industry.In response to Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported gasoline-powered and electric cars from China, American automakers like Ford Motor have abandoned plans to import inexpensive cars from their Chinese factories. Chinese automakers like Guangzhou Auto have also shelved plans to enter the American market.Chinese car exports have surged this spring as new factories come into production, many of them built with extensive subsidies. But the inexpensive Chinese cars have mainly gone elsewhere in Asia and to Europe, even as car prices in the United States have climbed.Ms. Yellen did not specifically address automotive tariffs.The first phase of the trade deal included a requirement for a high-level review this summer. The agreement requires China to stop forcing foreign firms to transfer their technology to Chinese companies doing business there.Phase 1 also included a Chinese pledge to buy an additional $200 billion of American goods and services through the end of this year. The agreement was intended to make sure that China did not retaliate for American tariffs by discouraging Chinese companies from buying American goods.Although China has resumed large-scale purchases of U.S. goods since the countries’ trade war, neither the overall value of these purchases nor the composition of purchases has met the Trump administration’s hopes.China fell short of its commitments by 40 percent last year and is off by more than 30 percent so far this year, said Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who has been tracking the purchases. The pace of agricultural purchases has picked up, but China is not buying enough cars, airplanes or other products made in the United States to meet its obligations.China also pledged in the Phase 1 agreement that its purchases of American goods would continue rising from 2022 through 2025.Biden’s Blended ApproachThe Biden administration is cognizant that all of these purchase requirements have frustrated American allies who feel that the agreement has cost them sales.One reason China is not eager to reopen potentially acrimonious negotiations over American tariffs and Chinese subsidies is that the Phase 1 agreement has transformed trade relations between the two countries, said the people familiar with Chinese economic policymaking. Trade has gone from being one of their biggest sources of friction to becoming one of the least contentious areas of their relationship.Under Mr. Biden, the United States has maintained pressure on China and in some respects stepped it up, focusing on concerns about its humanitarian record that Mr. Trump usually overlooked.In March, the Biden administration placed sanctions on top Chinese officials as part of an effort with Britain, Canada and the European Union to punish Beijing for human rights abuses against the largely Muslim Uyghur minority group.In June, the White House took steps to crack down on forced labor in the supply chain for solar panels in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, including a ban on imports from a silicon producer there. It also set aside a dispute with Europe over aircraft subsidies for Boeing and Airbus in June so that the United States could more effectively corral allies to counter China’s ambitions to dominate key industries.China has also been accelerating the pace of “decoupling” from the United States, directing its technology companies to avoid initial public offerings in the United States and list in Hong Kong instead. That has been a big blow to Wall Street firms that have reaped large advisory fees from Chinese companies listing their shares in the United States.Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, has said little so far about the Phase 1 agreement, preferring to emphasize that the administration is still developing its policy toward China.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThe Treasury Department, with its close ties to Wall Street, has long been much more wary of antagonizing China than the Office of the United States Trade Representative, a separate cabinet agency that oversees trade policy. Katherine Tai, Mr. Biden’s trade representative, has said little so far about the Phase 1 agreement, preferring to emphasize instead that the administration is still developing its policy toward China.Ms. Yellen’s official meetings with her Chinese counterparts have so far been sparse. The Treasury Department announced last month that she had held a virtual call with Liu He, China’s vice premier. They discussed the economic recovery and areas of cooperation, and Ms. Yellen raised concerns about China’s human rights record.She expressed those concerns publicly during a speech in Brussels this week, telling European finance ministers that they should work together to counter “China’s unfair economic practices, malign behavior and human rights abuses.”The comment made waves within the Chinese government. A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, said that “China categorically rejects” Ms. Yellen’s remarks and described them as a smear.The Biden administration has won praise for maintaining a hawkish stance toward China without the provocative approach of the Trump administration, which destabilized the global economy with tariffs and a trade war.“Joe Biden has done what he said he would do — he has collected the allies and got them aligned in a similar manner on similar issues in a way that greatly strengthens America’s position vis a vis China,” said Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council.Michael Pillsbury, the Hudson Institute scholar who was one of Mr. Trump’s top China advisers, said the Biden administration’s approach to China was shaping up to be tougher and “more effective” than Mr. Trump’s because Mr. Biden’s aides were united in their view that the United States cannot successfully confront China alone.The big question is what comes next.Mr. Bown, of the Peterson Institute, said the Biden administration’s review of the China trade policy was taking so long most likely because the Trump administration had made so many sweeping and sometimes conflicting actions that it was a complicated portfolio to inherit. There are also complex political calculations to be made when it comes to removing the tariffs.“It’s politically toxic to be seen to be weak on China, so you’re going to need to have your ducks in a row in terms of your economic arguments,” Mr. Bown said.Despite the recent animosity, the United States was able to help coax China into joining the global tax agreement that Ms. Yellen has been helping to broker. The Biden administration believes that China wants to be part of the multilateral system and that fully severing ties between the two countries would not be healthy for the global economy.“I think we should maintain economic integration in terms of trade and capital flows and technology where we can,” Ms. Yellen said, adding that the relationship must balance security requirements. “Clearly, national security considerations have to be very carefully evaluated and we may have to take actions where, when it comes to Chinese investment in the United States or other supply chain issues, where we really see a national security need.”Alan Rappeport reported from Washington, and Keith Bradsher from Beijing. More

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    Yellen Makes Case for Ireland to Join Global Tax Deal

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    The Treasury secretary was in Europe to gather support for the tax plan, an agreement that gained the support of the Group of 20 nations on Saturday.BRUSSELS — The United States is hopeful that Ireland will drop its resistance to joining the global tax agreement that it is brokering, as Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen made the case to her Irish counterpart this week that it is in its economic interests to join the deal.During a weeklong trip to Europe, Ms. Yellen worked to gather more support for a global plan that is intended to put an end to tax havens and curb profit shifting with a new global minimum tax. The agreement, which gained the support of the Group of 20 nations on Saturday, would usher in a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent. It would also change how taxing rights were allocated, allowing countries to collect levies from large, profitable multinational firms based on where their goods and services were sold.“For Ireland, low taxes has been an economic strategy that has been incredibly successful,” Ms. Yellen said in an interview on Tuesday ahead of her return to Washington. “They see it as very vital to their economic success. And I think to go along with it, probably they need to be able to make the case that it’s in the interest of the country.”Ms. Yellen held high-stakes meetings in Brussels this week with Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister and president of the Eurogroup, a club of European finance ministers. She needs Mr. Donohoe’s support because the European Union requires unanimity among its members to formally join the deal, which will require changes to domestic tax laws.After meeting with Ms. Yellen on Monday, Mr. Donohoe struck a positive tone and said he would continue to engage in the process.Despite growing global support for the deal, much work remains to be done.More than 130 countries have backed a framework of the global agreement, which would be the largest shake-up of the international tax system in decades, but important holdouts like Ireland, Hungary and Estonia remain. With stops in Venice and Brussels on her first trip to Europe as Treasury secretary, Ms. Yellen worked with her counterparts to develop a strategy for getting those countries to drop their concerns and join the agreement so that a final pact can be secured by October.Ms. Yellen told her Irish counterpart that Ireland’s economic model would not be upended if it increased its tax rate from 12.5 percent, noting that it would still have a large gap between its rate and the 21 percent tax rate on foreign earnings that the Biden administration has proposed.The Biden administration believes that the agreement, if enacted, will end the “race to the bottom” on corporate taxation, heralding a new era of corporate governance that will help nations finance new infrastructure investments and reduce inequality. Greater tax fairness could also aid in pushing back against the rise of right-wing populists, who have come to power around the world on a wave of frustration that working-class citizens have been forgotten by the elites.“Globalization is not just serving to enrich the rich further and harm the poor,” Ms. Yellen said. “In some broader sense the international tax piece is about that.”Top economic officials are working out complicated details of the global tax plan and will be scrambling to finish them in the coming months. One thorny issue that emerged at the G20 meetings in Venice last weekend was how tax revenue will be allocated around the world as part of a new tax on the largest and most profitable companies.Selling the agreement in the United States could be the biggest challenge. Congress is narrowly divided, and Republicans have been adamant that they will not support tax increases, giving the Biden administration a narrow margin for success even if it is able to pass most of its proposed tax changes with only votes from Democrats.Republican lawmakers have complained that the United States is “surrendering” its tax base by allowing other countries to impose new levies on its companies. For instance, in some cases, China will be able to collect new tax revenue from American businesses that sell products there. However, the United States will probably be able to collect taxes from some Chinese companies that do business in the United States. It is not clear if China would have a net gain from that part of the deal.Ms. Yellen portrayed the global tax as part of a broader economic reckoning that the Biden administration believes needs to happen in order to prepare the United States — and the rest of the world — for future fiscal needs.She pointed to the Biden administration’s tax plans, which include raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, as central to that approach, saying the administration wants to address what she considers to be the unfairness of the tax code in the United States.“It just isn’t right for very successful companies to be able to avoid paying their fair share to support expenditures that we need to invest in our economy, to invest in our work force, in R.&D. and a social safety net that’s operational,” Ms. Yellen said.Yet resistance is mounting from corporate America, with business groups warning that the possibility of $2 trillion in corporate tax increases would make American companies less competitive around the world. And with rising prices continuing to be a concern among policymakers in the United States, business interests have said the tax increases could fuel inflation, as companies pass them on to consumers.Ms. Yellen dismissed that theory, arguing that most of the economic research has found that corporate tax increases mostly fall on past investments and would not harm workers or lead to prices rising faster.“There’s no reason to think that changing corporate taxes would have some direct impact on prices,” Ms. Yellen said. More

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    E.U. Delays Digital Levy as Tax Talks Proceed

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    The postponement came as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Brussels to continue pushing for a global minimum tax.BRUSSELS — The United States secured a diplomatic victory in Europe on Monday when European Union officials agreed to postpone their proposal for a digital levy that threatened to derail a global effort to crack down on tax havens.The delay removes another potential obstacle to the broader tax agreement, which gained momentum over the weekend after finance ministers from the Group of 20 countries formally backed a new framework. That deal, which officials hope to make final by October, would usher in a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent and allow countries to tax large, profitable companies based on where their goods and services are sold. If enacted, the changes would entail the biggest overhaul of the international tax system in a century.With those negotiations in their final stretch, the European Union was planning to propose a 0.3 percent tax on the goods and services sold online by all companies operating in the European Union with annual sales of at least 50 million euros. That was intended to help fortify a fiscal recovery fund and had been in development since last year, when the international talks taking place at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development appeared to be on life support.But that new levy had been unacceptable to U.S. officials, who viewed it as disproportionately hitting American firms. As Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen arrived in Brussels to pressure the European Union to drop or delay the plan, officials announced on Monday that it would be shelved.“I think we will work together to reach this global agreement,” Paolo Gentiloni, European commissioner for economy, told reporters after a meeting with Ms. Yellen. “In this framework I informed Secretary Yellen of our decision to put on hold the proposal of the commission of a digital levy to allow to us to concentrate, working hand in hand to achieve the last mile of this historic agreement.”A European Commission spokesman suggested that the delay would remain in place until October, a time frame that is in line with the deadline set by the O.E.C.D. to complete a global tax agreement.Ahead of a meeting with the Eurogroup, a club of euro-area finance ministers, Ms. Yellen had waved off questions about the significance of the digital levy delay. A Treasury Department spokeswoman said she had no comment.At a news conference in Venice on Sunday, Ms. Yellen made clear that she believed that the new E.U. proposal ran counter to the broader talks over a minimum tax and the elimination of digital services taxes in Europe and other countries.“It’s really up to the European Commission and the members of the European Union to decide how to proceed, but those countries have agreed to avoid putting in place in the future and to dismantle taxes that are discriminatory against U.S. firms,” Ms. Yellen said.Other finance ministers indicated that the delay was another sign of progress.“It’s very, very good that we are now going to the next step, discussing how we will implement this at the European Union and that the European Union is deciding not to go with its own proposal to the public today,” Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, said as he entered the meeting.The E.U. digital levy proposal faced a difficult path to becoming law in Europe, but the prospect of a new proposal that could be construed as a tax that targets American companies would have been another distraction for the fragile negotiations.The United States has already been angered by other digital taxes that countries like France, Italy and Britain have enacted, which are separate from the new proposal. More than a dozen countries have enacted or announced plans in recent years to move forward with their own digital taxes.The Biden administration has asked countries to immediately drop their digital taxes and has prepared retaliatory tariffs on a wide swath of European goods, including cheese, wine and clothing. As part of the global tax negotiations, countries have said they are willing to do so in exchange for additional tax on the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises, those with profit margins of at least 10 percent, that would be based on where their goods or services were sold, even if they had no physical presence there.France, Europe’s biggest proponent of a digital tax, had no comment Monday. Its finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, had said during the weekend that France would legally commit to withdrawing its digital services tax only after an agreement was in effect, which is unlikely to happen before 2023.In remarks at the meeting on Monday, Ms. Yellen emphasized the importance of a close relationship between the United States and the European Union and underscored the importance of the global tax agreement that she has been helping to broker. She argued that a deal over a global minimum tax would help European nations make important investments in their economies and reduce inequality.“Long-run fiscal sustainability is critically important, which is one of the reasons why we need to continue working collectively to implement a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent, in line with the commitment the G20 made just days ago,” Ms. Yellen said. “We hope all E.U. member states will join the consensus and the European Union will move forward on this issue at E.U. level.”Ms. Yellen made the case that fiscal sustainability should be achieved by taxing multinational companies, adding: “We need sustainable sources of revenue that do not rely on further taxing workers’ wages and exacerbating the economic disparities that we are all committed to reducing.”The meeting also offered Ms. Yellen an opportunity to persuade Ireland to join the global agreement. Ireland, Estonia and Hungary have yet to sign on to the deal, which is now backed by 132 countries. Because support must be unanimous within the European Union, their resistance could scuttle the entire agreement.The United States has been trying to make the case to Ireland that the proposed tax changes in the United States that aim to curb profit shifting would nullify many of the benefits Ireland had gained from having a tax rate of just 12.5 percent. They are also trying to convince Ireland that its status as a corporate hub would be secure even if it raised its tax rate, hoping to alleviate Irish concerns that joining the agreement would upend its economic model.O.E.C.D. officials believe that Ireland is withholding its support for the agreement until the Biden administration demonstrates that it can pass tax legislation in the United States. Ms. Yellen will return to Washington on Tuesday and work with members of Congress to win support for the deal.After a meeting with Ms. Yellen, Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister and president of the Eurogroup, offered an optimistic tone but made no commitments. He said that he had a “very good engagement” with the Treasury secretary and that there was “further work ahead.”“I affirmed to Secretary Yellen that Ireland remains very committed to the process,” Mr. Donohoe said, promising that he would remain “constructively engaged.”Liz Alderman More

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    Janet Yellen Warns That Coronavirus Variants Threaten Global Recovery

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    At the end of a gathering of the finance ministers of the Group of 20 nations, the U.S. Treasury secretary called for an acceleration of vaccine distribution worldwide.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Sunday that coronavirus variants could hinder the global economic recovery and called for a stepped-up effort to vaccinate the world’s population.Luca Bruno/Associated PressVENICE — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Sunday that she was concerned that coronavirus variants could derail the global economic recovery and called for an urgent push to deploy vaccines more rapidly around the world.Her comments, made at the conclusion of a gathering of the finance ministers of the Group of 20 nations, came as the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus was driving outbreaks among unvaccinated populations in countries such as Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Portugal. Delta is also now the dominant variant in the United States.“We are very concerned about the Delta variant and other variants that could emerge and threaten recovery,” Ms. Yellen said. “We are a connected global economy. What happens in any part of the world affects all other countries.”Many cities and countries have started to declare victory against the pandemic, easing restrictions and returning to normal life. But Ms. Yellen warned that the public health crisis was not over.She said that the world’s top economic officials had spent much of the weekend in Venice discussing how they could improve vaccine distribution, with the goal of getting 70 percent of the world inoculated by next year. Ms. Yellen noted that many countries had been successful in financing the purchase of vaccines, but that the logistics of getting them into people’s arms were falling short.“We need to do something more and to be more effective,” she said.The spread of variants has started to dampen optimism about the trajectory of the recovery.Analysts at Capital Economics said this week that they planned to lower their economic growth outlook for the year to below 6 percent.The spread of new coronavirus variants has “raised doubts about the pace of real economic growth in the second half of this year and beyond,” Paul Ashworth, the chief North America economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note.The International Monetary Fund said that it was maintaining its projection for 6 percent global growth this year, but it warned that growth was being suppressed in developing countries where infection rates were surging.“The divergence across economies is intensifying,” Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the I.M.F., said on Saturday. “Essentially, the world is facing a two-track recovery.”Some finance ministers also expressed concern over the weekend that variants and slow vaccine uptake could upend the recovery. That concern was highlighted as a downside risk to the global economy in the joint statement that the group released.“The single hurdle on the way to a quick, solid economic rebound is the risk of having a new wave of pandemics,” said Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister. “We all have to improve our vaccination performance.”The I.M.F. executive board approved a plan last week to issue $650 billion worth of reserve funds that countries could use to buy vaccines and to finance health care initiatives.Ms. Yellen said that she had pressed her Group of 20 counterparts to accelerate “equitable” delivery and distribution of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics to ensure that low- and middle-income countries could fight flare-ups of the virus.Policymakers at the meeting this weekend also spent time focusing on new investments to prepare for future pandemics. Ms. Yellen said that, while this was important, there was more that needed to be done in the near term.“Certainly variants represent a threat to the entire globe,” she said. More

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    Top U.S. Officials Consulted With BlackRock as Markets Melted Down

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    The world’s largest asset manager was central to the pandemic crisis response. Emails and calendar records underscore that critical role.As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin scrambled to save faltering markets at the start of the pandemic last year, America’s top economic officials were in near-constant contact with a Wall Street executive whose firm stood to benefit financially from the rescue. More

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    The Pandemic Stimulus Was Front-Loaded. That Could Mean a Bumpy Year.

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    When government support fades away, there’s a risk that the affluent will sit on their cash rather than spend it.Waiting in line to file for unemployment benefits in Fort Smith, Ark., last April. Nick Oxford/ReutersThe U.S. economy is about to face a new challenge that has its roots in the arithmetic of growth: That which fiscal stimulus giveth, fiscal stimulus taketh away.The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan enacted in March, as well as a $900 billion pandemic aid package passed in December, are heavily front-loaded. They were set up to get money out the door fast. But one consequence of that strategy is that fiscal policy in the quarters ahead will subtract from economic growth.Economists mostly project that the economy, with strong momentum in the labor market and huge pools of pent-up savings by households, will be strong enough to keep growing despite the fading of the fiscal boost. To avoid an economic downturn, a huge handoff must occur from government-driven demand to the private sector.The mainstream view is that this will be successful. But there are aspects of this unusual economic moment that could make the road ahead bumpy.There is no modern precedent for such huge swings in sums the government is pumping into the economy. And there is a risk — recently acknowledged by a top Federal Reserve official — that if pandemic-era savings are disproportionately held by the affluent, they will sit on that cash rather than spend it.“We’re definitely going to see a huge drop-off in fiscal stimulus,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics. “The question then is how well positioned is the economy to deal with that, and we don’t really know for sure, which applies to so much about this period we’re going through.”Most Americans who were to receive stimulus checks of a combined $2,000 per person have already gotten them. The Treasury Department said this month that $395 billion of that cash is now shipped, which is slightly more than the payments in the American Rescue Plan were projected to cost when it was passed.While unemployment insurance payments remain elevated, that spending is also tapering as people return to work — and supplements to those payments are scheduled to expire in September. Much of the other spending was either near-term, focused on things like vaccine rollout, or will be spent very gradually, such as on an expanded child tax credit and grants to state and local governments.Overall, government spending added 8.5 percentage points to the economic growth rate in the first quarter, according to calculations by the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. But that so-called fiscal impact is forecast to turn slightly negative in the second and third quarters — and then act as a meaningful drag on growth in the fourth quarter of 2021 and in 2022.By the second quarter of 2022, fiscal policy is on track to subtract 3.3 percentage points from the growth rate, considerably more than the 2.2-percentage-point subtraction in the third quarter of 2011, which was the most extreme quarter in the last post-stimulus hangover of the previous recession.That could change depending on where negotiations on infrastructure and family support policies lead, but those policies would be expected to influence fiscal policy over many years — they are backloaded rather than front-loaded — so they shouldn’t radically change the near-term future.The case for staying calm even as federal spending plummets rests on the rapid growth of the private sector in recent months.Employers are adding to their payrolls at a breakneck pace, so rising compensation ought to prop up consumer spending even as government support goes away. Businesses report being in an expansionary mood, which bodes well for investment spending. And overseas economies should start to surge ahead as other countries achieve more widespread vaccination, which would be good news for American exports.“I think the basic story is that the economy is reopening, so it can take the fact that this stimulus is coming off,” said Louise Sheiner, a senior fellow at Brookings.Moreover, Americans are sitting on a vast pool of savings from money they didn’t spend on things like travel and restaurants during the pandemic. Households have saved an average of $282 billion per month since March 2020, compared with $103 billion a month in 2019.So a big question for the economy in the second half of 2021 and 2022 is what happens to that cumulative additional savings of $2.5 trillion. Will it prop up near-term spending enough to keep growth on a strong track, or will Americans instead prefer the comfort of having a beefed-up balance sheet?That’s where the distributional concern arises. To the degree that money is held by people who are financially well-off, they may be less likely to spend it and help propel the economy.“Today’s fiscal tailwinds are projected to shift to headwinds next year,” said Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, in a speech this month. “So an important question is how much household spending will continue to support growth into next year, as opposed to settling back to prepandemic trends.”On the other hand, the rapidly shrinking fiscal surge could help moderate the inflation pressures that have been building in the economy. Whatever you think of the decision to send $2,000 to people, there won’t be any more checks that might push demand still higher and risk fueling a cycle of inflation.Ultimately, this is another example of the ways the pandemic-driven economy is an unusual one. The only real historical comparisons to the kinds of surges in government spending of the last five quarters involve the beginnings and ends of wars, which have their own economic dynamics.Which means it’s worth watching exactly what happens as the federal government pulls back, and whether American consumers and businesses and importers from around the world step up the way forecasters expect. More

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    U.S. Backs Global Minimum Tax of at Least 15% to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

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    The Biden administration wants other countries to back a minimum tax as part of its plan to raise the U.S. corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent.The Biden administration proposed a global tax on multinational corporations of at least 15 percent in the latest round of international tax negotiations, Treasury Department officials said on Thursday, as the U.S. looks to reach a deal with countries that fear hiking their rates will deter investment. More

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    As Trillions Flow Out the Door, Stimulus Oversight Faces Challenges

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    A sprawling system meant to police trillions of dollars is showing signs of strain as watchdogs warn of waste, fraud and abuse.WASHINGTON — Lawmakers have unleashed more than $5 trillion in relief aid over the past year to help businesses and individuals through the pandemic downturn. But the scale of that effort is placing serious strain on a patchwork oversight network created to ferret out waste and fraud. More