Mnuchin: No decision yet on labeling China a currency manipulator

WASHINGTON – US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday said he hasn't made a decision yet about whether to label China a currency manipulator.

"We have a process within Treasury where we go through and look at currency manipulation across the board, and we'll go through that process," Mnuchin said on CNBC. "We'll do that as we have in the past, and we're not making any judgements until we continue that process."

In a separate interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Mnuchin said there would be "no announcement" of any currency manipulation before the department finishes its twice-yearly report on foreign exchange rates in April.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged to have his Treasury secretary name China a currency manipulator on the first day of his administration, but he told The Wall Street Journal several days before his inauguration that he would talk to the Chinese government before taking such an action.

The last time China was cited as a currency manipulator was in 1994.

In the October report on foreign exchange rates, the Obama administration said China met only one of three criteria to be named a currency manipulator – a large bilateral trade surplus with the US.But the Treasury department said China didn't have a material current account surplus and had not engaged in persistent one-sided intervention in the foreign exchange market.

In a call with International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde on Tuesday, Mnuchin said that he wants the fund to "provide frank and candid analysis of the exchange rate policies" of member countries.

The IMF doesn't consider China a currency manipulator. In its last annual assessment of the Chinese economy, the IMF found the value of the yuan "remains broadly in line with fundamentals."