Currency Manipulation War Continues

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2017 by
Skerdian Meta • 1 min read

One of Trump´s promises during his presidential campaign was to fight currency manipulation on a global scale. He has only made slight advancements to combat currency manipulation, though it´s been mainly in comments or threats.

First he began by blaming China, since the Chinese officials have pegged the Yuan to the USD and allow very little fluctuation. But after last week´s visit to China he changed his mind. The reason for this is the situation in North Korea.  

Then he moved on to Germany and Japan; the ECB (European Central Bank) and BOJ (Bank of Japan) are actually in the middle of an expansionary monetary policy, which has weakened their respective currencies by 20-30 cents over the last few years.

They obviously defended themselves. After all, the FED started helicopter money first, right after the 2008 global financial crisis. But then again, trying to get your economy up and running is not exactly currency manipulation.

It´s another thing entirely, however, if you actually intervene in the forex market in order to weaken your currency, which brings us back to China and Switzerland. Both central banks have been intervening, which is real manipulation.

But while Trump let China off the hook, the Swiss are fighting back. This morning, the Swiss government said that the intervention is not aimed at devaluing the CHF for export purposes and that the SNB (Swiss National Bank) has its own separate agenda.   

The Swiss remain on the US currency manipulation monitoring list, but I´m not really sure if this list is worth the paper it´s printed on. What can the US actually do about this and would it be fair or ethical knowing that everyone plays their currency at some point?

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