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Currency manipulator branding: U.S. ‘destroying international order’ -China

Agency Report
Agency Report
Currency manipulator branding: U.S. 'destroying international order' -China
US-China war

A day after Washington branded Beijing a currency manipulator in a rapidly escalating trade dispute, China’s official Communist Party newspaper said on Tuesday that the United States was “deliberately destroying international order.”

The accusation, which followed a sharp slide in the yuan on Monday, has driven an even bigger wedge between the world’s largest economies and crushed any lingering hopes for a quick resolution to their year-long trade war.

The dispute has already spread beyond tariffs to other areas such as technology, and analysts caution tit-for-tat measures could widen in scope and severity, weighing further on global economic growth.

In a strongly-worded editorial, the People’s Daily said the United States was holding its own citizens to ransom, without mentioning the latest U.S. decision.

The responsibility of big countries is to provide the world with stability and certainty while creating conditions and opportunities for the common development of all countries, according to the editorial.

“But some people in the United States do just the opposite,” it said.

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Monday that it had determined for the first time since 1994 that China was manipulating its currency, taking the trade row into uncharted territory and adding to frenzied selling in global financial markets.

The announcement came hours after China let its yuan currency break through a key support level to an 11-year low, in a sign Beijing might be willing to tolerate more currency weakness as Washington threatens to impose more tariffs.

The yuan has tumbled 2.3% in three days since President Donald Trump’s sudden declaration last week that he will impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese imports from September 1.

But it appeared to steady on Tuesday amid signs that China’s central bank may be looking to stem the slide, which has sparked fears of a global currency war.

“Naming China a currency manipulator could open the door for U.S. tariffs to eventually increase to more than 25% on Chinese goods,” according to a note from DBS Group Research.

“Apart from naming China a currency manipulator, Trump’s election campaign pledge was to lift import tariffs to 45% on China.”

OTHER RETALIATION OPTIONS

The U.S. decision to label China a manipulator came less than three weeks after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the yuan’s value was in line with China’s economic fundamentals, while the U.S. dollar was overvalued by 6% to 12%.

U.S. law sets out three criteria for identifying manipulation among major trading partners: a material global current account surplus, a significant trade surplus with the United States, and persistent one-way intervention in foreign exchange markets.

“In a strict sense, it’s baseless for the U.S. side to determine that there was exchange rate manipulation based on the change in the exchange rate of the RMB (yuan) on a single day,” said Zhang Anyuan, Chief Economist at China Securities.

“Now that there is a label…,(we) do not rule out the U.S. will introduce punishing measures that go beyond existing understanding of the situation.”

Chinese state media had warned that Beijing could use its dominant position as a rare earths exporter to the United States as leverage in the trade dispute.

The materials are used in everything from military equipment to high-tech consumer electronics.

Shares in some of China’s rare earth-related firms surged on Tuesday amid speculation the sector could be the next front in the trade war.

Beijing could also step up pressure on U.S. companies operating in China, analysts say.

Beijing in June issued a travel advisory warning Chinese tourists about the risks of traveling to the United States, citing concerns about gun violence, robberies and thefts.

Air China (601111.SS) said on Tuesday that it was suspending its flights on the Beijing-Honolulu route starting on August 27, following a review of its network.

In a further sign of deteriorating ties, China’s commerce ministry announced overnight that its companies had stopped buying U.S. agricultural products in retaliation against Washington’s latest tariff threat.

Trump had earlier declared China’s currency move to be “a major violation”, and analysts said it is likely the White House pressured the Treasury Department to issue the designation.

“They don’t have any meaningful tools to do anything about it, unless they just want to pile more tariffs on,” said Mark Sobel, a former senior Treasury and IMF official who now works with the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a London-based think tank.

Source:  Reuters

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