Trump: China not unfairly adjusting currency

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he will not label China a currency manipulator.

Trump made the remarks in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, indicating that China will not be named a currency manipulator in a US Treasury Department report on the exchange rate policies of its major trading partners. The report is expected to be released later this week.

"They're not currency manipulators," Trump told the Journal.

During the campaign, Trump vowed to impose 45 percent tariffs on Chinese exports into the US, triggering concern about a possible trade war between the two largest economies.

Such concerns have been greatly eased lately, especially following the first meeting between Trump and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.

Both sides have spoken positively of the meeting. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said both sides reached several important consensuses and the meeting has set a constructive tone for the development of the bilateral relationship.

Wang praised the meeting for boosting mutual understanding and establishing a good working relationship and personal friendship between the two leaders. Trump also accepted Xi's invitation to visit China this year.

The two sides also announced the China-US Comprehensive Dialogue mechanism to be overseen by the two presidents. It includes four pillars: Diplomatic and Security Dialogue; Comprehensive Economic Dialogue; Law Enforcement and Cybersecurty Dialogue; and Social and Cultural Issues Dialogue.

Most top US economists don't believe China has manipulated its currency in the past years.

The most recent US Treasury semiannual report issued last October said China met only one of the three criteria for measuring a currency manipulator.

In its last annual evaluation of China's economy, the International Monetary Fund said the value of the currency, the yuan or renminbi, "remains broadly in line with fundamentals".

David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former US Treasury emissary in Beijing, said last week that China's central bank has kept its currency high - making its exports more expensive. "And it is in the United States' interest to encourage more of that," he said.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 04/13/2017 page1)