No major trading partner manipulates currency: US Treasury

In its semi-annual Report on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the US, the Department on Friday concluded that Vietnam, Switzerland and Taiwan met all three criteria for enhanced currency analysis under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 during the four quarters through December 2020, reports Xinhua news agency.

However, there is "insufficient evidence" to make a finding that Vietnam, Switzerland, or Taiwan manipulates its exchange rate for either of the purposes referenced in the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, the Department said.

The Treasury believed that "enhanced engagements" with Switzerland, Vietnam and Taiwan will enable it to better determine whether any of these economies intervened in currency markets to "prevent effective balance of payments adjustment or gain an unfair competitive advantage in trade".

No other major US trading partner met the relevant 1988 or 2015 legislative criteria for currency manipulation or enhanced analysis during the review period, according to the Treasury.

But the Treasury put 11 economies, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Ireland, Italy, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Mexico, on its "monitoring list", which means currency practices of these economies will bear close attention of the US government.

The report was the Joe Biden administration's first foreign-exchange policy report to US Congress, reversing a decision made by the former Donald Trump administration in December 2020 that Vietnam and Switzerland were labelled as currency manipulators.