Andrea Shalal and David Lawder

WASHINGTON/ROME, (Reuters) – Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary, will make her third visit to Europe in support of a series of White House economic priorities, including climate finance, corporate taxes and preventing pandemics.

She will be pitching at Group of 20 in Rome, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference 26 in Glasgow over the next week. An interim stop in Ireland is made to show appreciation to Ireland for her hard-fought support for a global 15% corporate minimum tax.

The U.S. President Joe Biden, along with other G20 leaders attending a weekend summit, are likely to support the tax agreement reached by 136 nations. This will cement progress this year under Yellen’s leadership.

Next Pandamic

Yellen arrived in Rome Wednesday evening, a day early than Biden. She was here to meet bilaterally and participate in a G20 health and finance ministers meeting Friday.

She is urging the finance and the health sector to be more prepared for the next pandemic. This will include a coordinated forum that detects and coordinates disease and separate funding mechanisms. The proposals were presented in a joint letter by her and Sri MulyaniIndrawati (the finance minister for Indonesia), to G20 members.

A diplomatic source claimed that other G20 nations had not yet fully accepted the financing mechanism due to a flurry of funding requests for climate change, COVID-19 vaccines, and debt relief.

According to Treasury officials, Yellen would also advocate for quicker progress on debt restructurings in highly indebted nations under the G20 framework.

Officials said that after the year ends, the G20 would not support the proposal to extend the freeze on the bilateral debt payments of the poorest countries.

Benefits of the TAX DEAL

Yellen and government leaders will be meeting in Dublin on Sunday and Monday to discuss tax deals. This will impact many U.S.-based technology companies who were attracted to Ireland by its low tax rate of 12.5%.

Treasury officials claim they have confidence in the Biden administration’s ability to execute the global tax agreement using a Democrats only budget measure, even though a divided Congress is struggling to reach an agreement on Biden’s huge spending bill.

U.S. Senate Democrats propose a 15% minimum corporate tax. This tax would be combined with a tax on unrealized billionaire assets.

Yellen plans to emphasize multilateral development banking to mobilise private sector investments for carbon abatement. Treasury officials stated that Yellen would also use tax and economic policies to help accelerate the transition to a less carbon-intensive economy during COP26 in Glasgow, Nov. 2-3.

Her presentation will include the U.S. Financial Stability Board’s efforts to integrate climate risks into the agency’s daily work.

Yellen will still have to face a US climate spending agenda that is less ambitious. The incentives for replacing coal power plants in the United States with solar, wind and nuclear power was dropped from this package.