Earlier post is here: US says it will examine more countries for currency manipulation
Bloomberg have more, citing 'people familiar with the matter':
- Trump administration will expand the number of countries it scrutinizes for currency manipulation in an upcoming report
- lowering the bar for foreign governments to come under scrutiny
The 'people familiar say that Treasury has reduced one of the three criteria it uses to test for manipulations
- the current account surplus, which captures the difference between the amount a country exports and imports. The criteria was reduced to a surplus of 2 percent of gross domestic product from 3 percent
The list of suspects to include about 20 countries, from 12 in the previous report
- Vietnam may be named a manipulator outright for artificially holding down the value of the dong, the people said, after meeting all three criteria the Treasury Department uses to test for currency interventions.
- Internal debate is continuing over the issue and the administration has asked Vietnam to disclose more information before it releases the report.
As some background to this:
- The US Treasury issues its foreign currency report a report twice a year.
- The next is expected this month.
There are 3 criteria, one is referred to above, the other two:
- significant bilateral trade surplus with the US is one that is at least $20bn
- persistent, one-sided intervention whereby the economy purchased foreign exchange on net for eight of the 12 months, totalling at least 2% of an economy's GDP over 12 months
