Yellen's July 22-27 trip to Brazil for a Group of 20 finance Ministers and central bank Governor's meeting marks the first major engagement of a Biden administration cabinet official with international counterparts since Biden’s decision this Sunday to step aside and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.

Yellen aims to press ahead at the Rio de Janeiro G20 meeting with US efforts to boost growth through green energy incentives, increase multilateral development bank lending to address climate change and tackle debt distress in poor countries, a senior US Treasury official said.

She will also emphasize support for Ukraine and speak on China's manufacturing capacity. But questions over the continuity of US policies in the wake of Biden's decision will be high on the minds of G20 officials at the meetings, participants and analysts said.

"The situation in the US is really in the spotlight as a background to this meeting," a European G20 delegate said.

The delegate added that questions over a Trump victory and US commitments on climate, taxes and other issues are "basically what everybody has in mind in terms of how sustainable are the things that we now agree."

FOCUS ON G20 AGENDA

Such questions will likely come up in Yellen's private conversations, but not likely the formal G20 sessions on the global economy, debt restructurings, climate, and taxation, said Josh Lipsky, Senior Director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center in Washington.

Officials will want to hear more from Yellen about Harris' economic priorities, he added.

"She can say we are focused on the policy, fully and we’ll let the politics play out, but no one should question the future of US leadership in the global economy and its commitment to economic multilateralism," said Lipsky, a former International Monetary Fund official.

Yellen will focus squarely on the G20 agenda at the meeting, the US Treasury official said when asked last Friday about international concerns over rapidly evolving US election politics.

--Reuters--