'China no currency manipulator'

The Treasury Department for the final time during President Barack Obama's tenure declined to label China a currency manipulator, in an implicit rejection of Republican nominee Donald Trump's hard-line approach to the world's second-biggest economy.

The Obama administration added Switzerland to a currency watch list that already included China, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan, according to a semiannual report on global foreign-exchange policies from the Treasury. However, it found that no major trading partner met the legal definition of a currency manipulator, and the US said China's recent efforts to prop up the yuan were preventing a rapid depreciation that would hurt the global economy.

China was found to meet only one of three criteria used to determine the watch list, compared with two of three in April.