(Washington, D.C.) – The U.S. Business and Industry Council strongly condemned the Obama administration's failure to cite China as a currency manipulator in the Treasury Department's latest congressionally mandated biannual report on international exchange rate policies.
The report breaks the major commitment Obama made last year as a candidate to fight Chinese exchange rate protectionism effectively by endorsing the strongest currency manipulation bill proposed in Congress, according to council research fellow Alan Tonelson.
“His decision not to cite China gives Beijing a green light to keep cheating America's domestic manufacturers and their employees out of earnings and jobs,” Tonelson said. Obama's failure to cite also shows how clueless the administration remains on fixing the nation's main economic problems. The economic crisis can be truly overcome only if the nation produces its way out – and grounds its prosperity in earnings once again, not reckless borrowing.”
USBIC argues that China's currency manipulation and other foreign mercantilist policies stand as major obstacles to revitalizing the U.S. economy's wealth-creating sectors and that by appeasing Beijing's exchange-rate protectionists, the President has moved the nation farther away from recovery.
Tonelson also rejected the Treasury Department's suggestion that the domestic stimulus programs announced by China and other major trading powers reduce Washington's need to spotlight currency manipulators.
"Even if these stimulus programs are put into effect they would simply recreate the same global imbalances that helped trigger the crisis unless mercantilist behavior is abandoned," Tonelson said. China's currency manipulation is one of the most egregious forms of mercantilism on the world economic scene today."
During the Democratic primary campaign, then-Senator Obama endorsed the Stabenow-Bunning-Bayh currency bill, which would have designated currency manipulation by any country as an illegal subsidy subject to countervailing duties under U.S. trade law. This bill and its House counterpart have been strongly endorsed by USBIC, as well as by other domestic manufacturers' groups and labor unions.
The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Business & Industry Council is a national business organization founded in 1933. Its 1,900 members are mainly family-owned domestic manufacturing companies. For more information about the organization visit http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/
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