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U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

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281–290 of 356 posts

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The us decoupling itself from China would be an unmitigated disaster for the us as China would align itself with Russia.

Russia has the population of Nigeria and the GDP of Italy. The cold war ended a while ago. Worrying about them today makes about as much sense as worrying about Autria in 1930 because Austrohungaria used to be a world power.

Firstly, Nigerian population is much larger than Russian (190 vs 146). And secondly, what's wrong with population of Nigeria? It's 60% of population of USA and will probably be equal in 30 years.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#282
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Seems obvious to me that its the opposite. The US can always find other countries that manufacture things for cheap. China can't find other customers. The domestic demand isn't remotely high enough to propel their mercantilist economy, ironically due to the fact that the currency manipulation of the yuan has suppressed the wealth of Chinese citizens by devaluing their savings. The idea that Americans are too…

China already has other customers and a big and growing internal market. Of course, USA is one of the bigger customers but not the only. On the other hand, USA cannot import enough copper, aluminium and iron... (It's mined in China and Chinese controlled territories...) And create and staff factories out of thin air.

I'm sure those minerals are mined elsewhere.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#283
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If having two different exchange rates -- "offshore" and "onshore" -- doesn't say currency manipulator, I don't know what does.

Every currency has onshore and offshore rates. For example, you can buy dollars or Eurodollars, which is simple US currency kept offshore. Eurodollars have different exchange rates because they don't have the reserve requirements from the Fed. i.e: it's less regulated. The RMB has a heavier regulation whereby the exchange rate isn't allowed to fluctuate. This does increase the difference in value for the onshore and…

Where can i buy eurodollars?

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#284
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every currency has onshore and offshore rates. For example, you can buy dollars or Eurodollars, which is simple US currency kept offshore. Eurodollars have different exchange rates because they don't have the reserve requirements from the Fed. i.e: it's less regulated. The RMB has a heavier regulation whereby the exchange rate isn't allowed to fluctuate. This does increase the difference in value for the onshore and…

Where can i buy eurodollars?

I didn't know much about eurodollars until I used google and read this article, which seems quite good.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/012214/...

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#285

So, really, is there any doubt that this is true? China's currency exchange rate has been abnormally stable for a long time, and the Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan administrations all knew it was the result of currency manipuliation. They just found it politically unpalatable to admit it out loud. The real question would be, why is the U.S. finally admitting this out loud? 1) amping up a trade war 2) decoupli…

One person’s ‘currency manipulation’ is another person’s ‘monetary management’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system : ”The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained its external exchange rates within 1 percent by tying its currency to gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments” (See also http…

Tying the currency to the price of Gold is the opposite of manipulation. That was the point.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#286
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every currency has onshore and offshore rates. For example, you can buy dollars or Eurodollars, which is simple US currency kept offshore. Eurodollars have different exchange rates because they don't have the reserve requirements from the Fed. i.e: it's less regulated. The RMB has a heavier regulation whereby the exchange rate isn't allowed to fluctuate. This does increase the difference in value for the onshore and…

Where can i buy eurodollars?

In terms of financial products, you can « buy » it through futures contracts (or options on futures). It's a pretty common product AFAIK, at least as far as FOREX goes.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#287
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will there be more tariff increases or sanctions? And then China will devalue their currency even more. So where does it end? Currency devaluation is, among other things, effectively a subsidy for exports, a little bit like the opposite of a tariff. But it's not exactly the opposite, which makes doing it in response to tariffs a bit desperate. If you're selling something for $100 and someone sticks a $10 tariff on…

Or it could be an act of desperation to keep their factories running at full capacity. They have a large segment of the population that is only tolerant of the authoritarian regime while their economic prospects are improving.

Hong Kong has had enough. A dictatorship and a successful economy are the antithesis of each other.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has its own issues such as Brexit, lack of fiscal union, Greece, Italy debt, unemployment, slow growth, no immigration policy, no common foreign policy etc. When you talk about EU you really talk about 27 member states not some kind of United States of Europe. The EU it's not really in the mood of taking short term hits unless is threatened(i.e with tariffs). Not to mention that it supports Trump stance on China a…

Europe already benefits from lowered tariff and relaxed ownership rules that China made so far. The only thing that China seemed to be willing to entertain further is large purchase of US products, which means less purchase from everyone else. So Europe and other US allies like Canada and Australia should actually fear a US/China deal. There is a reason why this negotiation is bilateral -- in a multilateral setting y…

I really doubt that the US can say it got the deal of the century if China buys large quantities american beef or soybean. What everyone wants is open markets. No dumping sponsored by chinese government, enforcement of IP protection laws and many other things would ideally be part of the deal but I believe the market access is the primary issue and a deal could be stroke with that alone. The demand to make large purchase was to stop further tariffs and I'm not surprised China didn't fell for it.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#289
post #63

Every country would prefer to devalue their currency relative to others in order to increase their trade surplus (or cut their deficit). Mathematically they cannot all succeed, so it ends up being a slow motion race to the bottom.

I don't think that's the case at all.

1)Trade surpluses and deficits are an accounting measure that give a sense of the balance of your economy but cutting your trade deficit (or increasing a surplus) is not good or bad in itself. In spite of a lot of focus on these measures by the current US administration, economists as a whole (and therefore most non-US economic policymakers) take the view of Adam Smith, who said in "Wealth of Nations" Book IV, Chapter 3, that “Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade.” ...and therefore don't target the balance of trade in their decision-making.

2)These days most high-value products have complex supply chains and therefore exports are for the most part made up of components which are themselves imports. So even if you want to affect the balance of trade just devaluing the currency would not work the way you seem to think.

3) It seems to me you would want your currency to be cheap relative to others if you had assets in foreign currencies and debts in your sovereign currency. However typically most countries run a budget deficit and therefore have to issue new debt. If your currency is depreciating, on an on-going basis you can buy less and less hard assets with the currency that comes from issuing new debt because your currency is devaluing relative to other currencies which are also chasing those same assets.

Re: U.S. Designates China as Currency Manipulator

#290
post #199
post #160

One thing that I think is getting lost in this discussion is the role of intent on currency manipulation. Switzerland has the strongest currency in the world due to the country's reputation for governmental and financial stability. This makes Swiss labor extremely expensive for reasons mostly outside of their control, and the Swiss government has tried (and largely failed) to remedy this. Technically, this is devalua…

Just saw from Bloomberg that China responded by strengthening the RMB to under 7. Futures seem to be responding positively...

Note, they acted to make the RMB stronger than the markets were pushing it.

Dollars to donuts they get the “currency manipulator” label removed for that action...

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