President Trump says China stopped manipulating its currency because of his presidential campaign. Economists say otherwise.
“Since I started running … they have not manipulated their currency, ” Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday. “I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign.”
That’s at odds with comments Trump made during his run for the White House, when he frequently accused China of pushing the yuan down to give its exports an unfair advantage at the expense of the U. S.
He pledged that the Treasury Department would officially label China a “currency manipulator” on his first day in the White House.
He failed to follow through on that promise — to the relief of many observers who said the claim wasn’t grounded in facts. But Trump’s new version of events — that China stopped devaluing the yuan (also known as the renminbi) because of his presidential campaign — is also deeply flawed.
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China has been intervening in currency markets “since and before Trump came to office, ” said Chi Lo, senior economist for Greater China at BNP Paribas.
“But the intervention has come in the form of propping up the renminbi on the back of capital outflows from China, ” Lo said.
