Trade

John Rutledge, a key economist in the early Reagan administration and since a super smart watcher of financial markets, doesn’t like China’s currency change. He and I agree that China’s U.S. dollar peg has been a boon for both nations over the last decade. (I first wrote about the Chinese monetary issue and urged them to retain the dollar link after visiting China two years ago.) Our mild disagreement now hinges on politics. Were American politicians smarter about economics, and were our own Treasury Department not agitating for a Chinese currency change, I would be perfectly happy for China to continue its dollar peg. The idea that floating and flexible exchange rates are somehow “free market economics” is wrong. The Read More ›

A terrific young economist named Mike Darda notes a particular irony in the China money move: “[P]rotectionists in Congress thought they could jawbone China into dramatically appreciating the Yuan against the dollar to the benefit of U.S. exporters and to the detriment of U.S. consumers and importers. Dropping the dollar peg at a time when the dollar is rallying accomplishes just the opposite.”

China today dealt a blow to the protectionist sentiments building in the the U.S. Congress and thus did a great favor to the global economy, especially American technology companies. China slightly changed it currency’s (the yuan) value against the U.S. dollar, from 8.3/US$ to 8.1/US$. The move is immaterial economically but allows China to claim it has “revalued.” The large revaluation so many U.S. politicians were seeking, but did not get, would have been bad for both China and the U.S. China has fixed the yuan to the dollar since 1994, a brilliant move by then-economic minister Zhu Rongji. The peg created a single economic fabric stretching across the Pacific, kept China from catching the Asian flu of 1997-98, helped Read More ›