Bessent Skips the IMF Meetings in Bangkok During the US G20 Presidency as Warren Presses Him on 5% Treasury Yields

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent won’t attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Bangkok, which run from October 12 to 18, Reuters reported. Deputy Secretary Francis Brooke and Under Secretary for International Affairs Erin Browne lead the US delegation. A US official cited “domestic engagements.”

The absence stands out because the US holds the G20 presidency this year. Bessent was expected to chair the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Bangkok on Thursday. He also skipped the 2025 G20 meetings in South Africa. Treasury says it will push for “greater transparency and more effective approaches to sovereign debt” and wants the IMF and World Bank to stick to their core mandates.

Photo: US Department of the Treasury, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The yields fight at home

Bessent’s domestic engagements include a dispute over borrowing costs. On October 7 Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, wrote to him about Treasury yields. The 10-year yield hit 5.34% at the close on September 30 and about 5.37% intraday on October 7, the highest since 2002. CBO had projected in February that it would stay below 4.4% for 30 years.

Treasury has been buying back older debt: $5.2 billion on September 10, $4.1 billion on September 24 and $6 billion on October 1. “Your intervention is failing,” Warren wrote. She asked whether Treasury would draw down its cash account to fund larger buybacks, and wants answers by October 21.

Bessent answered on Fox on October 11, calling her letters “economically illiterate” and asking whether her staff “sit around all day drinking herbal tea and think about raising taxes?”

Why it matters

Debt management has become a political issue. Total public debt is about $40.3 trillion. The deficit for fiscal 2026 was about $2 trillion. Interest is the government’s second-largest expense, as covered in our post on interest costs. Every percentage point on the 10-year yield adds hundreds of billions to future interest bills as debt is refinanced.

Buybacks don’t reduce the debt. They swap less-traded older bonds for new ones, which can help market functioning but has little effect on yields set by inflation, Fed policy and the deficit. Warren’s point is that Treasury is presenting them as a fix. Bessent’s is that tax increases are the real agenda behind the criticism.

Abroad, the G20 presidency gives Washington the chance to set the agenda on sovereign debt in developing countries, where China is the largest bilateral lender. Sending deputies to the meetings it was meant to chair signals that the administration’s priorities lie elsewhere. The G20 leaders’ summit is in Miami in December.