Yellen 'very optimistic' Congress will pass bills needed to implement global minimum tax after G-20 agreement

Janet Yellen.
(Image credit: ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images)

After finance ministers from the world's 20 largest economies finished up a meeting in Venice, Italy, on Saturday by agreeing to support a proposal that would impose a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she's "very optimistic" that Congress will pass bills necessary to implement the deal stateside, Bloomberg reports.

Republicans, and some Democrats, remain skeptical of the plan and still intend to fight it, The New York Times writes. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), for instance, said his expectation is that if and when the agreement is finalized it will provide advantages for "foreign companies and workers over American ones."

But Yellen doesn't seem concerned about the expected opposition. She said she's been talking with Democratic leaders of key congressional committees, and the expectation is that changes related to the global minimum tax will be get pushed through via the process of reconciliation, which won't require any GOP votes, so long as all Democrats are on board.

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Regardless of whether Yellen's confidence is warranted, senior officials at the Group of 20 meeting in Venice told the Times that approval of the agreement within the U.S. is "crucial to its broader acceptance and should not be taken for granted." Read more at Bloomberg and The New York Times.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.