{"id":8556,"date":"2015-05-28T18:48:19","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T23:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8556"},"modified":"2015-05-28T18:48:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T23:48:19","slug":"the-currency-manipulation-charade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8556","title":{"rendered":"The Currency Manipulation Charade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Currency Manipulation Charade.<\/a><\/h3>\n

NEW HAVEN \u2013 As the US Congress grapples with the ever-contentious\u00a0Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 President Barack Obama\u2019s signature trade legislation \u2013 a major stumbling block looms. On May 22, the Senate avoided it, by narrowly defeating \u2013 51 to 48 \u2013 a proposed \u201ccurrency manipulation\u201d amendment to a bill that gives Obama so-called \u201cfast-track\u201d authority to negotiate the TPP. But the issue could be resurrected as the debate shifts to the House of Representatives, where support is strong for \u201cenforceable currency rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

For at least a decade, Congress has been focusing on currency manipulation \u2013 a charge leveled at countries that purportedly intervene in foreign-exchange markets in order to suppress their currencies\u2019 value, thereby subsidizing exports. In 2005, Senators Charles Schumer, a liberal Democrat from New York, and Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, formed an unlikely alliance to defend beleaguered middle-class US workers from supposedly unfair competitive practices. Stop the currency manipulation, went the argument, and America\u2019s gaping trade deficit would narrow \u2013 providing lasting and meaningful benefits to hard-pressed workers.<\/p>\n

A decade ago, the original Schumer-Graham proposal was a thinly veiled anti-China initiative. The ire that motivated that proposal remains today, with China accounting for 47% of America\u2019s still outsize merchandise trade deficit in 2014. Never mind that the Chinese renminbi has risen some 33% against the US dollar since mid-1995 to a level that the International Monetary Fund\u00a0no longer considers undervalued<\/a>, or that China\u2019s current-account surplus has shrunk from 10% of GDP in 2007 to an estimated 2% in 2014. China remains in the crosshairs of US politicians who believe that American workers are the victims of its unfair trading practices.<\/p>\n


\nRead more at http:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/currency-manipulation-legislation-tpp-by-stephen-s–roach-2015-05#VmdR75E4svhYI0m8.99<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Currency Manipulation Charade. NEW HAVEN \u2013 As the US Congress grapples with the ever-contentious\u00a0Trans-Pacific Partnership\u00a0\u2013 President Barack Obama\u2019s signature trade legislation \u2013 a major stumbling block looms. On May 22, the Senate avoided it, by narrowly defeating \u2013 51 to 48 \u2013 a proposed \u201ccurrency manipulation\u201d amendment to a bill that gives Obama so-called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1238,130,2913,353,804,805,806,808,1796,5779],"class_list":["post-8556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-barak-obama","tag-china","tag-currency-manipulation","tag-gdp","tag-tpp","tag-trade","tag-trade-deficit","tag-trans-pacific-partnership","tag-us-congress","tag-us-house-of-representative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8557,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions\/8557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}