U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

Re:U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator by ajross on Monday August 05, 2019 @06:51PM (#20620039)

It's manipulation. The RMB has been artificially fixed for decades for targetted economic/political reasons. It's being adjusted now not so that it can seek to a market value but to target another specific value for political/economic reasons. No one argues this. The PRC manipulates it's currency. It always has. It certainly doesn't seem likely to stop.

That said: this is what trade wars look like, folks. If we didn't want to fight in one we shouldn't have started it. The currency-manipulated status quo of the past two decades or so has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and made the world richer than it ever has been.

But no, someone's gotta score domestic political points based on a poor understanding of economics and some intuition about how to make a good populist argument.

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Re:U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator by kasey_junk on Monday August 05, 2019 @06:55PM (#20620071)

Oh, that China engages in currency manipulation is not really up for debate.

What I find humorous is that this particular move seems to be driving the currency closer to the consensus opinion on where it should be.

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Re:U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator by seanmcdirmid on Monday August 05, 2019 @06:54PM (#20620066)

If the RMB was left to find a market value, it would fall way below 7 to probably 7.5 or even 8 something. Yes, it is being manipulated, but in the other way that Trump says it is. The Chinese are simply running out of the dollars needed to keep manipulating it so that it stays stronger than 7!

The simple irony is that if the Chinese were just to give up manipulating the RMB all together, Trump would be even more angry.

Everyone manipulated, the Japanese and Koreans do it, even the Swiss do it. The only thing that the Chinese do differently is have non market exchanges and currency controls on convertibility. (And their central bank is much less independent than the fed).

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Re:U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator by internet_user on Monday August 05, 2019 @06:59PM (#20620115)

There is a certain criteria, and neither Swiss, Koreans, or Japanese meet that criteria.

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Re:U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator by AnimalMuppet on Monday August 05, 2019 @07:11PM (#20620230)

Could you be more specific?

And, did China meet the criteria before this latest move?

(And, minor nit: criterion is singular. Criteria are plural.)

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Re:U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator by seanmcdirmid on Monday August 05, 2019 @07:01PM (#20620135)

Yes, but the “criteria” are vague and arbitrary, so there might as well be none at all. This is purely a political decision, not an empirical one.

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