President Joe Biden said Sunday that the United States and other Group of seven leading economies will ban gold imports from Russia, the latest in a series of sanctions that the club of democracies hopes will isolate Russia economically for its invasion of Ukraine.
A formal announcement was expected Tuesday as the leaders hold their annual summit.
Biden and his counterparts will meet on the opening day of the summit on Sunday to discuss how to secure energy supplies and tackle inflation, with the goal of preventing the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from dividing the global coalition working to punish to Moscow.
Hours before the formal opening of the summit, Russia launched missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital on Sunday, hitting at least two residential buildings, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. They were the first such attacks by Russia in three weeks.
Senior Biden administration officials said gold is Moscow’s second-biggest export after energy, and banning imports would make it harder for Russia to participate in global markets. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details before the announcement.
The US Treasury will issue a determination to ban the import of new gold into the United States on Tuesday, further insulating Russia from the world economy by preventing its participation in the gold market, a senior administration official said.
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british prime minister boris johnson He said the Russian gold ban would “directly hit the Russian oligarchs and strike at the heart of Putin’s war machine,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is wasting his meager resources on this senseless and barbaric war. He is financing his ego at the expense of the Ukrainian and Russian people,” Johnson said. “We need to deprive the Putin regime of financing him.”
In recent years, gold has been Russia’s top export after energy, reaching nearly $19 billion or about 5% of global gold exports in 2020, according to the White House.
Of Russia’s gold exports, 90% went to the G-7 countries. Of these Russian exports, more than 90%, or nearly $17 billion, went to the UK. The United States imported less than $200 million worth of gold from Russia in 2019 and less than $1 million in 2020 and 2021.
Biden arrived in Germany’s picturesque Bavarian Alps early Sunday to join his counterparts at the annual meeting of the world’s leading democratic economies. The repercussions of the brutal war in Ukraine will be front and center in his discussions. Biden and allies aim to present a united front in support of Ukraine as the conflict enters its fourth month.
Unity was the message Biden brought to a pre-summit meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who holds the rotating presidency of the G-7 and is hosting the meeting.
“We have to make sure that we all stay together. You know, we’re going to keep working through the economic challenges that we’re facing, but I think we’re going to get through all of this,” Biden said.
Scholz responded that the “good message” is that “we all managed to stay united, which Putin never expected,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We have to stick together, because Putin has been counting, all along, that somehow NATO and the G7 would split up, but we haven’t and we won’t,” Biden said. “We cannot allow this aggression to take the form it has and go unpunished.”
Biden and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the European Union, spent Sunday in formal and informal settings, including working sessions on how to deal with the effects of the war on the world economy, including inflation, and in infrastructure.
Among the issues to be discussed are energy price caps, which are meant to limit Russian profits from oil and gas that Moscow can use in its war effort. The idea has been championed by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
A senior German official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with department rules, said the US idea of price caps was being discussed intensively, in terms of how it would work and how it would fit with the US. ., the EU, Great Britain, Canada and Japan. sanctions regimes.
Officials also discussed how to keep commitments to address climate change while also addressing critical energy supply needs as a result of the war.
“Climate commitments are not watered down,” John Kirby, a spokesman for Biden’s National Security Council, said Saturday as the president flew to Germany.
Biden is also scheduled to formally launch on Sunday a global infrastructure partnership designed to counter China’s influence in the developing world. He called it “Building Back a Better World” and presented the program at last year’s G7 summit.
Kirby said Biden and other leaders will announce the first projects that will benefit from what the US sees as an “alternative to infrastructure models that sell debt traps to low- and middle-income country partners and promote economic competitiveness.” of America and our national security.”
After the G-7 concludes on Tuesday, Biden will travel to Madrid for a summit of the leaders of the 30 NATO members to align strategy on the war in Ukraine.
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