US Treasury Chief Janet Yellen called on Friday for a "level playing field" between American and Chinese companies, telling officials during a visit to southern China that Beijing's industrial subsidies threatened that balance.

Yellen arrived in the city of Guangzhou on Thursday for four days of talks with Chinese officials on what is her second visit to the world's number two economy in less than a year.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday appeared to walk back comments from President Biden that U.S. taxpayers would foot the bill for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore.

Appearing on MSNBC, Yellen said money from the bipartisan infrastructure law could "potentially be helpful." 

"My expectation would be that ultimately there will be insurance payments, in part, to cover this. But we don’t want to allow worrying about where the financing will come from to hold up reconstruction," Yellen said. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she regrets describing inflation in 2021 as “transitory,” the term several Federal Reserve and Biden administration officials used to describe the pandemic-induced price surges they initially thought would be temporary.

“I regret saying it was transitory. It has come down. But I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people,” Yellen said during an interview with FOX Business Network’s Edward Lawrence on Monday.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. economy is on the path toward taming inflation without a deep economic slowdown, achieving a so-called soft landing. 

“To me a soft landing is the economy continues to grow, the labor market remains strong and inflation comes down. And I believe that’s the path we’re on,” Yellen said Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended the Internal Revenue Service in a speech Tuesday against repeated threats from Republicans to cut the agency’s funding.

“Playing politics with IRS funding is unacceptable. Cutting it would be damaging and irresponsible,” Yellen said.

The IRS was allocated an influx of $80 billion by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year. The funds are intended to help crack down on tax cheats and improve taxpayer service.

But the funding has become politically controversial.

Auctions of government debt, normally routine events for the Treasury Department, have suddenly become very important to financial markets.

With debt, deficits and bond yields all surging, investors are watching closely how the government will go to market with its borrowing needs.

Both bond and stock markets have been volatile amid fears of oversupply at a time when the Federal Reserve is keeping monetary policy tight, and as investors are demanding a premium for interest rate risk and geopolitics is posing various wild cards.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ate hallucinogenic mushrooms during her recent visit to China, she announced Monday.

Yellen ate the mushrooms as part of a meal at popular Chinese restaurant chain Yi Zuo Yi Wang (In and Out). She said she was not aware at the time that the dish included psychedelic mushrooms, but it soon became clear.

"So I went with this large group of people and the person who had arranged our dinner did the ordering," Yellen told CNN. "There was this delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties."

A US credit downgrade by Fitch was "entirely unwarranted," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday, pushing back against the second-ever decrease by a major ratings agency following repeated debt limit standoffs in Washington.

Her remarks came a day after the world's biggest economy lost its top-tier credit rating from Fitch as the agency lowered it a notch from AAA to AA+, drawing fiery disapproval from the White House and Treasury.

President Biden's administration is placing the blame for the United States' drop in credit rating on former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 riots.

Fitch announced Tuesday it has officially downgraded the United States' long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating to "AA+" from "AAA," saying the downgrade "reflects the expected fiscal deterioration" and the nation's heavy debt burden.

An administration official claimed to FOX Business on Wednesday that the underlying model was AAA until former President Donald Trump's administration.