US Treasury says China does not manipulate its currency

US Treasury Department on Friday declared that no major trading partner of the US, including China, met the standard of manipulating its currency, while six economies were listed on its Monitoring List to ensure extra scrutiny of their foreign exchange policies.

In its Semi-Annual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies, the Treasury Department concluded that no major trading partner of the United States, including China, has manipulated their currencies over the past six months to keep them undervalued, Xinhua news agency reported.

However, it put China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Switzerland on its Monitoring List, saying their foreign exchange policies bear close monitoring.

The report said China remained on the list because of its "disproportionate share of the overall US trade deficit", despite that China's current account surplus was only 1.8 per cent of GDP in 2016, sharply down from 2.8 per cent of GDP in 2015.

US President Donald Trump this week said in an interview that China has not been manipulating its currency, RMB (yuan), for months, a sharp reversal from his campaign promise.

--IANS

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