WASHINGTON – After a week of relentless Republican attacks on trade deals and globalization, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is heading to a meeting in China that he hopes will steady the global economy and ease uncertainty caused by Britain’s surprise vote last month to leave the European Union.
Lew will urge the Chengdu gathering of finance ministers from the Group of 20 advanced economies to pursue strong growth policies, using all appropriate tools, to prevent any further slowing of the world economy. Arguments for austerity policies that were voiced among these ministers just three years ago have now disappeared, he said.
The meeting will be the first post-Brexit gathering of financial leaders. Lew said the United States favors a negotiated transition agreement that provides “maximum integration” between the United Kingdom and European Union economies.
This week, the International Monetary Fund lowered slightly its global growth forecast for this year, to 3.1 percent, noting that Brexit “adds downward pressure to the world economy” at a time when growth is already slow. The IMF added that a protracted, angry debate over terms for Britain’s departure from the EU would further depress growth estimates, to 2.8 percent for this year and next.
Lew said the Obama administration would make “every effort” to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in its remaining six months in office, and he insisted that “we still have the ability to get it done,” despite criticism of the pact by both parties. “We have a challenge making that argument in the current environment, where the combination of technological change and globalization makes it easier to make arguments against free trade,” he conceded, but he affirmed that President Obama intends to persist.