“Appreciating China’s Currency” – Griswold
“China’s President Hu Jintau arrives in Washington today for a state visit, turning the spotlight once again on U.S.-China trade and China’s allegedly undervalued currency, the yuan. Not one to let such an opportunity go to waste, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is introducing legislationthat would threaten to impose duties on imports from China if the yuan does not appreciate quickly.
Count me skeptical that a more expensive yuan relative to the U.S. dollar would make much of a dent in our bilateral trade deficit with China, or that it would have any positive effect on U.S. economic growth and employment. But even if those assumptions were true, the big story is how much the yuan as already appreciated against the dollar.
It has been a mantra of Sen. Schumer and other critics of U.S.-China trade that the yuan is undervalued by 15 to 40 percent. They were saying that before the 2005 appreciation, and they’re saying that now, as though nothing has changed.” Read more.
“Appreciating China’s Currency”
Daniel Griswold
Via the Cato Institute, January 18, 2011.
Image by renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
