The Trump administration did not label China a currency manipulator last week in part because China has not been manipulating its currency since President Trump took office, the White House said Monday.
“They haven’t been manipulating their currency since he’s been in office, that’s a fact,” spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Monday at the White House.
Trump argued during the campaign that China is undervaluing its currency, the renminbi, in order to gain a trade advantage against the United States. A lower-valued renminbi makes Chinese goods cheaper when they land in the United States.
The data show that China has stabilized the value of the renminbi soon after Trump won the election in November, as Spicer suggested.
More than a decade ago, China permitted the renminbi to increase in value compared to the dollar, from about 8.3 per dollar to about 6 per dollar.
But from 2014 to 2016, the value of the renminbi began to fall again, to almost 7 per dollar. So far in 2017, however, the renminbi has held steady at about 6.9 per dollar.
While China has stabilized its currency, Spicer also admitted that now is not a good time to label China a manipulator, since the U.S. is working with China to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
“It’s not a quid pro quo, it’s just saying that in the middle of them taking very positive signs to help us address … the situation in North Korea, that to label them a currency manipulator I don’t think would be very productive in achieving a very, very important national strategic objective,” Spicer said.
Last week, Trump’s Treasury Department put China on a watch list for currency manipulation, and said China has a “long track record of engaging in persistent, large-scale, one-way foreign exchange intervention.”
