Keep knowledgeable with free updatesSimply signal as much as the US-China relations myFT Digest — delivered on to your inbox.US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has warned China to not flood the world with low-cost clear power exports, saying they’d distort world markets and hurt employees. Yellen delivered her message to Beijing from a photo voltaic power producer in Georgia on Wednesday, simply days earlier than her second journey to China as Treasury secretary. The feedback mirror continued concern within the Biden administration about China’s commerce practices, that are more likely to be a supply of friction throughout Yellen’s go to regardless of current efforts by each nations to stabilise relations. “It is very important the president and me that American corporations and employees can compete on a stage enjoying discipline. We now have raised overcapacity in earlier discussions with China and I plan to make it a key concern in discussions throughout my subsequent journey there,” Yellen stated. Yellen stated China’s earlier extra manufacturing of metals corresponding to metal and aluminium had broken the worldwide economic system — and warned that related oversupply of unpolluted power merchandise, together with photo voltaic, electrical autos and lithium-ion batteries, may additionally distort markets. “China’s overcapacity distorts world costs and manufacturing patterns and hurts American corporations and employees,” she stated, including that she had heard related warnings “from authorities counterparts in industrialised nations and rising markets, in addition to from the enterprise group globally”. Yellen pressed Chinese language officers to take the “needed steps to deal with this concern”.Senior US Treasury officers had already raised considerations with Chinese language officers about overcapacity in clear power merchandise, together with in talks with He Lifeng, the vice-premier liable for China’s economic system.The warnings from Yellen come because the Biden administration tries to drive funding into its personal home cleantech sector, providing enormous tax breaks and subsidies to builders to construct inexperienced power manufacturing amenities within the US and break dependence on Chinese language provide chains. The subsidies included in President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Discount Act have been criticised as protectionist by US allies. Clear power teams have additionally warned that strikes to limit Chinese language clear power imports into the US will sluggish efforts to cut back emissions and make renewable know-how costlier.Commerce with China is poised to grow to be a outstanding concern within the 2024 presidential marketing campaign pitting Biden in opposition to Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor.RecommendedBiden has saved lots of the tariffs on Chinese language imports that Trump imposed, however the former president has vowed to impose steeper levies on Chinese language merchandise if he wins a second time period. That is anticipated to place strain on Biden to take a more durable stance in opposition to Beijing on commerce heading into the November vote. Yellen stated in her speech that Biden’s insurance policies have been already producing outcomes, together with in Georgia — an important swing state within the election. She highlighted corporations’ bulletins of greater than $675bn in clear power and manufacturing investments because the begin of the administration, saying that photo voltaic accounted for greater than half of latest energy technology capability added to the US grid final yr.