Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Biden administration would be prepared to use all its sanctions tools against China if Beijing moved aggressively toward Taiwan.
“I believe we’ve shown we can” impose significant pain on aggressive countries, as evidenced by sanctions against Russia, Yellen told lawmakers Wednesday as she testified before the House Financial Services Committee. “I think you should not doubt our ability and resolve to do the same in other situations.”
Russia’s attack on Ukraine has undermined confidence that world powers would be able to prevent a crisis from similarly erupting over Taiwan, a democratically governed island of more than 23 million people and key global source of semiconductors. China has long claimed Taiwan as a renegade province and threatened to invade to prevent its independence.
Last month, China warned the U.S. against trying to build what it called a Pacific version of NATO, while declaring that security disputes over Taiwan and Ukraine were “not comparable at all.”