US Treasury Department Stops Short of Calling China a Currency Manipulator

The US Department of the Treasury stopped short of labeling Beijing a currency manipulator in a Friday report, saying that no major trading partner of the United States met the standards of the bill for currency manipulation in the second half of 2016.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Although the US trade deficit topped $500 billion in 2016, none of the United States’ major trading partners engaged in any currency manipulation in the second half of the year, a new report from the Department of the Treasury said.

"[B]ased on the analysis in this report, Treasury… concludes that no major trading partner of the United States met the standards identified in Section 3004 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 for currency manipulation in the second half of 2016," the report stated on Friday.

President Donald Trump campaigned in the 2016 US election on the pledge he would end what he claimed was widespread manipulation of currency rates that discriminated against American manufacturers, but the report found no evidence of such policies.

"Treasury has established criteria specified in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015… Pursuant to the 2015 Act, Treasury has found in this report that no major trading partner met the criteria for the current reporting period," it stated.

However, the report did caution that six major US trading partners warrant being placed on the monitoring list for special attention: China, Germany, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan.