The U. S. Treasury Department sharply criticizes China\u2019s exchange-rate policy, though it stops short of labeling the Asian trade giant a currency manipulator.<\/b>
The U. S. Treasury Department sharply criticized China\u2019s exchange-rate policy on Friday, though it stopped short of labeling the Asian trade giant a currency manipulator.
\u201cChina has a long track record of engaging in persistent, large-scale, one-way foreign exchange intervention, \u201d the Treasury Department said in its semiannual report on the foreign-exchange policies of major U. S. trade partners. Although Beijing has allowed the yuan to slowly appreciate in recent years and actively fought depreciation recently, its past interventions \u201cimposed significant and long-lasting hardship on American workers and companies.\u201d
\u201cTreasury will be scrutinizing China\u2019s trade and currency practices very closely, especially in light of the extremely sizable bilateral trade surplus that China has with the United States, \u201d it added.
Earlier this week, U. S. President Donald Trump reversed course on a promise that he had made both on the campaign trail and from the White House: that he would designate China as violating international exchange-rate rules, pushing down the yuan to gain a competitive advantage.
The report has traditionally been used as a diplomatic tool to prod other countries whose currency policies were deemed a threat to U. S. industries. The latest report\u2019s censure of China and other countries\u2014including South Korea and Germany\u2014could be used in the future as a pretext for new tariffs.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.<\/p>\n