Treasury: China not manipulating currency

[pampango]

TREASURY: CHINA NOT MANIPULATING CURRENCY:

The Treasury Department has ruled this week that China’s currency is not being manipulated for unfair trade advantage despite Beijing’s devaluation of the renminbi in August.
"Since this move, the [renminbi] depreciated 2.3 percent against the dollar through September," Treasury said in the congressionally mandated semi-annual report released late Monday. "The change in the foreign exchange regime, together with the signs of the slowing growth in China, created market expectations that the RMB would depreciate further against the dollar in the short-run."

China said it made the change in its exchange rate to bring the renminbi, also called the yuan, in line with market forces. But the move caught markets by surprise and renewed calls in Congress for the Obama administration to take a tougher line against currency manipulation, both with China and in the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Treasury noted that the RMB has appreciated nearly 30 percent since June 2010 but emphasized that "further currency appreciation" is key to China shifting its domestic economy to a greater reliance on household consumption and less on exports and investment to fuel growth.

http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade

The whole Treasury report is at: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/international/exchange-rate-policies/Documents/2015-10-19%20(FXR)_FINAL.PDF

Krugman has said essentially the same thing:

China 2015 Is Not China 2010

If there is a central policy theme to Donald Trump’s candidacy other than immigration — actually, there isn’t, but there are some particular things he bellows about — it’s China-bashing. The unifying principle is probably xenophobia; but anyway, China’s currency moves are about to become a US political issue. And pretty soon, I expect, people will point out that some liberals also used to complain about Chinese currency manipulation.

But that was a while ago — mainly in 2010. And the underlying situation has changed, a lot.

First of all, China has experienced a very large real appreciation since 2011, partly due to higher inflation than in its trading partners, partly because its dollar peg means that it has tagged along with the rising dollar (which was supposed to plunge due to QE, but never mind):



So if The Donald occasionally sounds like me five years ago, bear in mind that stuff has happened over those five years; I’ve noticed, but he probably hasn’t.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/china-2015-is-not-china-2010/

I imagine that Trump has 'noticed' the appreciation in China's currency but chooses not to mention it for political reasons.