Trump slams China and Japan as currency manipulators

U.S. President Donald Trump continues to make his presence felt around the world in his
second week in the Oval Office.
Now, he's accused not only China... but Japan... of manipulating their currencies.
Kim Hyesung has the details.
Two weeks into his Presidency and Donald Trump is hitting his campaign issues one by one
-- this time it could be a currency war.
President Trump on Tuesday accused Japan and China of devaluing their currencies to gain
a trade advantage against the U.S.
"You look at what China's doing, you look at what Japan has done over the years.
They play the money market, they play the devaluation market and we sit there like a
bunch of dummies."
And just hours earlier, his trade advisor accused Germany of using a grossly undervalued
euro to "exploit" the U.S. and Germany's EU partners.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, however, flatly denied Trump's assertion,
saying the Bank of Japan's policy is in line with G7 and G20 agreements.
During the election campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized China as a currency manipulator,
saying that he would even impose a 45-percent tarriff on Chinese imports.
But according to U.S. Treasury standards, in order to use trade retaliatory measures
and label a country a currency manipulator , a country needs to have a trade surplus
with the U.S. of over 20 billion dollars, a current account surplus worth more than
3 percent of its GDP, and repeatedly depreciate its currency.
- "Currently, six countries including Japan,
Germany and Korea meet two of those three criteria.
China, one of them.
But those are standards set only by the U.S. -- they are not global standards.
If President Trump somehow labels trading partners like China and Korea as currency
manipulators... and imposes tariffs or other retaliatory measures, it would cause so much
inflation in the U.S. that it would hurt its economy."
While it remains unclear what Trump's next step could be, his comments sent the U.S.
dollar into a tailspin against the euro and the Japanese yen on Tuesday, and caused yet
more consternation among world leaders.
Kim Hyesung, Arirang News.

Trump slams China and Japan as currency manipulators

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