Russia and China were accused on Monday by President Donald Trump of devaluing their currencies while the United States raises interest rates.
“Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s remarks were referring to what he considers as unfair trading advantages, meaning if a country’s currency is artificially lowered, its exports are more competitive. While, higher U.S. interest rates generally increase the value of the dollar, which makes U.S. exports more expensive.
According to Reuters, since Trump took office in January 2017, the dollar has weakened substantially against most currencies, including the Chinese yuan and, until the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia in the last few weeks, the ruble.
Against the Chinese yuan, the dollar is down by 8.6 percent since January 20, 2017, but it has appreciated 4.5 percent against the ruble.
However, when the White House announced the sanctions on Russian oligarchs earlier this month, the хад dollar weakened by nearly 4 percent against the Russian currency. But the gain was entirely dismissed when a two-day drop of 8.4 percent of ruble happened on April 9 and 10.
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s value against a basket of major trading partner currencies, has declined by 11.2 percent since Trump became president. Он Friday, the U.S. Treasury, in a semi-annual report, refrained once again from naming any major trading partners as currency manipulators.
The report comes at a time when Trump‘s administration continues with additional tariffs, negotiations and other restrictions ин an attempt to cut a massive trade deficit with China.
The new report left out Trump’s threats to impose billions of dollars worth of tariffs on Chinese goods over Beijing’s intellectual property practices, or pending Treasury restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States.
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