ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — Scott Bessent designed this week’s G20 finance meeting to showcase President Donald Trump’s economic agenda and present it as the formula for accelerating growth worldwide.
Instead, he’s likely to spend much of the gathering trying to ease fears over the global impact of crushing U.S. debt and cajoling other countries to join in an effort to further economically isolate Iran.
The Treasury secretary is convening finance ministers and central bankers here Monday for two days of formal sessions on growth, financial regulation, global imbalances and sovereign debt, among other topics. But some of the meeting’s most pressing business will unfold on the sidelines.
“The biggest private conversations won’t be around sanctions. It’ll be about the bond market,” said Josh Lipsky, vice president and chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council. “These countries around the table, privately, want to hear directly from him what he’s intending” with his increasingly interventionist approach in the Treasury and foreign currency markets.
The gathering will put Bessent in a delicate position. He is asking foreign counterparts, many of whom are increasingly unsettled by Trump policies like tariffs and the Iran war, to follow America’s lead. He is also trying to reassure them that the U.S. can manage its massive debt without risking the global financial system while also seeking to enlist their support for a new economic pressure campaign against Tehran.
Treasury yields — the amount of interest the federal government pays on its debt — serve as a benchmark for borrowing costs worldwide, so Bessent’s moves can ripple through foreign markets. Long-term Treasury yields remain near levels last seen in 2007, reflecting inflation fears, the war with Iran and concern about mounting U.S. debt, which recently topped $40 trillion. Foreign governments and investors hold trillions of dollars of Treasuries.
Bessent this month announced that Treasury would at least double planned buybacks of certain long-term bonds to at least $4 billion per operation, sparking an initial drop in yields that has largely faded. Foreign officials are also expected to ask about Treasury’s rare joint intervention with G20 member Japan in July to bolster the yen, which Bessent has defended as a way to prevent Treasury yields from ticking even higher.
Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, the gathering’s co-hosts, flew to Asheville on the same plane Sunday. Warsh was fresh off a Jackson Hole speech signaling that the Fed could raise short-term rates, even as Treasury tries to push down longer-term yields.
Lars Klingbeil, the finance minister of Germany, Europe’s largest economy, said in a statement he planned to press for an end to the wars in Iran and Ukraine during the G20 talks. Klingbeil last week blamed Trump’s war with Iran for surging global bond yields.
“The first step is for everyone to play their part in reducing the massive global uncertainties” that are dragging down growth, he said ahead of the G20 gathering. “All of this is poison for global economic development.”
Meanwhile, Bessent will use “every single bilateral meeting” to push other countries to join his newest campaign to squeeze Iran’s economy and sever their remaining business ties with Tehran, said a senior Treasury official who was granted anonymity to discuss planning that was not yet public.
Bessent last week rolled out what he called “economic D-Day” for Iran, threatening to penalize foreign governments and companies if they continue doing business with the country. On Friday, Treasury unveiled its first public action in that effort, moving to block the UAE-based branches of a major Egyptian bank from the U.S. financial system.
The administration plans to hold up Trump’s tax cuts, incentives for business investment and research, increased energy production and regulatory rollbacks as a model for other countries to boost global growth.
The U.S. and its G20 counterparts are working toward negotiating a joint statement by the end of the sessions, according to a Treasury official and people familiar with the talks.
The Trump administration has put global imbalances at the top of its agenda for the talks. The U.S. wants the G20 to scrutinize policies that produce excess manufacturing capacity and push subsidized exports into foreign markets, an effort aimed primarily at China. But expectations are low that the G20, which includes China, would reach consensus on the issue.
Treasury’s agenda also includes efforts to make sovereign debt restructuring faster and more transparent, along with efforts to boost financial literacy and combat financial fraud.
Tariffs are not on the formal agenda, despite Trump’s widening trade conflicts, including a heated fight with Canada, which is also attending.
A brief G7 finance ministers’ meeting is planned Monday, with Ukraine and frontier artificial intelligence among the topics, according to people familiar with the agenda.
The Trump administration is also putting its own stamp on the Asheville gathering, the final major finance gathering before Trump hosts G20 leaders at his Doral resort in Miami in December.
Treasury officials are casting Asheville’s recovery from Hurricane Helene as a story of American resilience. And they’re giving corporate executives a larger role in the talks.
“This is the first time ever within the G20 that we’ve brought the private sector to the G20 itself,” Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs Erin Browne told Right Side Broadcasting Network. Executives, she said, will help “lead and guide” the discussions.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon are expected to join executives from manufacturing, health care, technology and crypto at the G20 talks. They include: Kent Masters, CEO of Albemarle; Bill Brown, CEO of 3M; David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly; Michael Lyons, the incoming CEO of Truist; Ryan Rugg, Citibank’s global head of digital assets; Eric Glyman, CEO of the fintech startup Ramp; and Heath Tarbert, the Circle president and former CFTC commissioner and Treasury official during the first Trump administration.
Treasury has also invited MAGA influencers to attend alongside international journalists. (The administration, meanwhile, is sparring with major news organizations over access to the event.)
Bessent will also sit for a Tuesday fireside chat with former Trump economic adviser and Fox Business host Larry Kudlow.
Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Rasmus Buchsteiner contributed to this report.