Asheville: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called for dismantling regulatory, tax and investment barriers holding back the global economy, while Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said stronger growth was a policy choice and the US economy appeared to be gaining momentum.
Opening a G20 financial meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, on growth, Bessent said global growth had remained below its potential for too long, both within the grouping and beyond it.
Governments, he said, must act on policy failures within their control.
“Policy failures of our own making must no longer be one of them,” Bessent told G20 finance ministers and central bank governors.
He listed excessive regulatory and administrative burdens, poorly designed financial incentives and tax systems, insufficient public and private investment, internal market fragmentation, and gaps in workforce skills and mobility among the impediments identified by the G20 finance track.
Bessent said the United States was moving to address each of those constraints under President Donald Trump.
“We have launched a great regulatory reset to accelerate growth, stimulate investment, increase employment, and boost wages,” he said.
“From day one, the president set the ambitious benchmark of slashing 10 existing regulations before issuing a single new one,” Bessent said. “Last year, agencies shattered that goal with a ratio of 129 to one.”
The Treasury Secretary said the administration was seeing record business investment. He also said the US had become the world’s premier destination for capital and reclaimed its position as an energy superpower.
“These achievements are shaping the next era of growth, and we are just getting started,” he said.
Bessent identified tax, energy and regulatory certainty as key drivers of economic expansion. He also welcomed reforms that other G20 members were considering or adopting to raise growth and involve the private sector in policymaking.
“We thank each of you for your contributions to this effort, and we welcome your thoughts on how to build on the great progress we made together this year moving forward,” he said.
“I’ve said previously that inflation is a choice,” Warsh said. “What I’ll add to the discussion today, consistent with my remarks a couple of days ago in Jackson Hole, is growth is a choice too.”
Warsh said growth was shaped not only by decisions taken by governments and central banks. Choices made by businesses, banks, technology companies and other enterprises also affected the foundations of the wider economy.
“I noted this morning that the United States economic growth appears to have strengthened,” he said.
Warsh said central bankers must look beyond consumer spending and immediate demand to assess changes on the economy’s supply side. They must examine the underlying growth potential of their economies, particularly changes in productivity, he said.
Citing Congressional Budget Office projections, Warsh said US economic growth was expected to run at about 1.8 per cent annually over the next decade. That forecast included what he called “a rather muted expectation for productivity growth”.
“Interestingly, those numbers are down from the actual economic growth over the last 10 years,” Warsh said.
He asked whether the increased capital expenditure discussed during the meeting would lift productivity and whether those gains could be sustained over a decade. He said the answers would be essential for future policy decisions.
The Group of 20 brings together major advanced and emerging economies for international economic coordination. Its finance track convenes finance ministers and central bank governors to discuss growth, financial stability, taxation, debt and other global economic challenges.
(IANS)
