US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen's trip to China is set to conclude after her meeting with top Chinese economic officials over the past four days. Secretary Yellen addressed several chief concerns on her trip, including the United States and China's diplomatic relationship and China's manufacturing overcapacity as it floods international markets with electric vehicles, EV components, and semiconductors.

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman expands on Secretary Yellen's comments and worries of another "China shock" to sweep across consumer markets.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

- Well, four days of top level economic meetings between the US and China coming to a close today. Janet Yellen's second trip to China in nine months, the Treasury Secretary saying that there is, quote, "much more work to do in terms of diplomacy between the two nations." Secretary Yellen spoke at a press conference earlier today, recapping some of her conversations with Chinese leaders, specifically calling out concerns around China's economic strategies and the negative spillovers on the US and the globe, including the country's desire to expand manufacturing in EVs, lithium ion batteries, and solar. Let's listen.

JANET YELLEN: And when the global market is flooded by artificially cheap Chinese products, the viability of American and other foreign firms is put into question. And we've seen this story before. I've made clear that President Biden and I will not accept that reality, again.

- Now shortly following that presser, Secretary Yellen told CNBC, at this point, in a CNBC interview, that, at this point, she would not rule out possible tariffs on green energy saying, quote, "we need to keep everything on the table." Joining us now with more [INAUDIBLE] bring in Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman.

And Rick, what's your reaction to the comments that we heard from Yellen in that presser, but also what she elaborated on just in terms of the fact that tariffs seem to still be on the table when it comes to green energy initiatives?

RICK NEWMAN: This went about as expected, I would say. So there are some important things going on here for investors to keep in mind. People are talking about worries about a China shock 2.0 or a second China shock. So the first China shock was all the cheap Chinese imports that came into the United States and other countries around the world after China joined the WTO in 2001.

And we recognize that the first China shock only after the fact because so much manufacturing left the United States. So when we talk about the second China shock, this is an effort to basically preempt another China shock in these other types of technologies and manufactured goods that President Biden has decided these are very important to the US manufacturing base, electric vehicle components, automotive components, things that are important to keep here in the United States.

And that's what she's talking about. So China is just at about the beginning phase of ramping up these massive waves of exports of very cheap electric vehicles to Europe, to Africa, to Mexico, to South America. And there are worries that those could end up here. And if they do, they will significantly undercut the vehicles on the market here.

So there is a very real likelihood that there will be some new US tariffs going into effect. And let's remember, we learned from the Trump administration that the president can do this unilaterally. So President Trump was the one who called himself tariff man, but there is a very real chance that President Biden could be the second tariff man, putting new tariffs on some select Chinese imports, especially electric vehicle, automotive components, and possibly other types of green energy products.

- And Goldman out today with a note talking about the economic implications potentially of more tariffs here on China goods. So Rick, Thanks so much for breaking all that down for us. We really appreciate it.

RICK NEWMAN: Bye, guys.