Finance ministers
from around the world
descended on Washington
this week as they do
every spring
for annual meetings of the World Bank
and the IMF.
They gathered a worrying time
for the world economy.
The IMF said this week
that it expects global growth
to be slower than last year.
Only 2.8%.
One of the pressures
weighing the world down.
Of course, is Russia's war with Ukraine.
More now of my exclusive interview
with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
You must have these IMF meetings.
We're talking about the Russia sanctions.
And I wanted to ask you.
When you look at them,
what is the piece of evidence
you could point to that
conclusively demonstrates
that they are actually working
and that Russia is being substantially
deprived of revenues,
that Putin is paying an economic price.
So we've had two objectives from
the outset.
One is to deprive Russia of revenue.
As you noted,
And the second is to deny him
access to the equipment that he needs
to provision his
military adequately
to conduct this brutal war.
On the revenue side
of our price, caps
that we've put in place on Russian oil
have lowered
the revenues that Putin is receiving
by roughly 40% over the last year.
He expected to have budget surpluses.
He now has very large budget deficits
in terms of equipment.
We know that we have had great success
in depriving him of the equipment
that he needs to conduct this war.
This is due to our export controls.
And importantly,
it's not just the United States
acting alone.
It's that we have strong
coalition partners
who are working together
to put in place sanctions,
export controls,
and working jointly on enforcement.
He lost over 9000
pieces of heavy equipment
on the battlefield field,
and we see the Russian,
the Russians struggling to replace this.
So we see on the battlefield
Russia is now
forced to resort to Iran and North Korea
to try to supply his military.
And we continue to take steps to
make sure
that vision of our sanctions
isn't possible.
But we think his military is really
short of the equipment that they need
to wage war.
Let me ask you about one of the costs,
one of the prices of these sanctions,
the way that the United States
has used sanctions.
Often in this case,
the case of the Iran nuclear deal
is to use
the power of the dollar
as the reserve currency of the world.
But that
weaponization of the dollar
has produced a reaction
This week, President Lula in Brazil
said,
Why are we all being forced
to use the dollar?
Emmanuel Macron
made reference to the dollar
In that same way
the European Commission has talked about
after Trump
pulled out of the Iran sanctions,
talked about
creating an alternative
to Swift
to the American dominated payment system.
Is there
a danger that we will look back at all
these
these measures and said
this was the moment
that the dollar's hegemony and its status
as a reserve currency began to falter?
So serious risk when we use
financial sanctions
that are linked
to the role of dollar of the dollar,
that over time it could undermine
the hegemony of the dollar, as you said.
But this is an extremely important tool
we try to use judiciously
and in circumstances
especially when we have
the support of our allies.
It's not just the United States.
It's a coalition of partners
acting together
to impose these sanctions.
So it is a very effective tool.
Of course,
it does create a desire on the part
of China, of Russia, of Iran
to find an alternative but
the dollar is used as a global currency
for reasons that are not easy
for other countries to find
find an alternative
with the same properties.
The US Treasury market is the deepest
and most liquid and safest asset
dollars are widely used.
It's we have very deep
capital markets
and rule of law
that are essential in a currency
that is going to be used
globally for transactions.
And we haven't seen any other country
that has the
best basic infrastructure
and institutional infrastructure
that would enable its currency to serve
a world like this.
We ask you one question
about Ukraine,
about rebuilding Ukraine, resupplying it.
It's going to take a lot of money.
There are some who say
this money should be taken from Russia's
frozen central bank reserves.
Would you agree with that?
I think Russia should pay for the damage
that it is done to Ukraine.
So that's a responsibility that I think
the global community expects.
Russia to bear.
This is something
we're discussing with our partners.
But
you know, several legal constraints
on what we can do
with frozen Russian assets
and we're discussing
with our partners
what might lie in the future.
But I think that's the right thing for
to happen, that Russia should pay
for the damages that it's caused.