Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says she’s confident inflation will ease next year

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks to the press during the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, on Wednesday. In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Yellen said she expects inflation will moderate by next year. She also called on the private sector to do more to fight climate change.

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Economy
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Yellen spoke to NPR from Glasgow, Scotland where she’s attending climate meetings.

At the talks, Yellen has been calling for the private sector to do more to fight climate change.

«The gap between what governments have and what the world needs is large, and the private sector needs to play a bigger role,» Yellen said in remarks prepared for a COP26 finance meeting.

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A customer pumps gas into her car at a Shell station on Oct. 12 in San Francisco. Prices for all kinds of things, including gas and food, have surged during the pandemic.

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Climate
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While the Biden administration was not able to push parts of its agenda on climate through Congress before the Glasgow summit, Yellen expressed confidence that lawmakers would soon pass both a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a separate, Democratic-backed measure with significant funding aimed at curbing greenhouse gases.

«These two packages jointly will be far and away the biggest investment that America has ever made in addressing climate change,» Yellen said.

Over the weekend, leaders of the G20 countries endorsed a global minimum tax plan that Yellen has championed.

That plan is designed to stop what Yellen has called a «race to the bottom» on corporate tax rates by requiring all countries to tax multinational companies at a rate of least 15%.

Yellen said the measure would also discourage other countries from imposing what the U.S. considers unfair taxes on American tech giants such as Google and Facebook.

«That portion of the agreement still requires some further work,» Yellen said.