The friction between Washington and Beijing over exchange rates is about to get a lot worse. On April 15, the US Treasury will issue the first of two semi-annual currency reports, mandated by law since 1988, in which China may be deemed to be manipulating its currency “for the purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade”. The Treasury and the Congress have been deliberating inconclusively on China's exchange rate policy since 2003, when the country's balance of payments surplus was a tenth of what it is now and its foreign exchange reserves were a sixth of the current stock of $2,500bn (€1,840bn, ￡1,660bn). This time, events may play out quite differently.
美中兩國在匯率問題上的摩擦將明顯激化。4月15日，美國財政部將發布今年首份半年度匯率報告——這是自1988年起法律賦予該部門的使命——報告中可能認定中國存在操縱本幣匯率的行為，“其目的是避免國際收支得到有效調整，或者在國際貿易中獲得不公平的競爭優勢”。自2003年以來，美國財政部和國會一直在審議中國的匯率政策，但都沒有做出確切的結論。這次，事情的結果可能大不相同。2003年的時候，中國的國際收支盈余是目前的十分之一；外匯儲備則是目前2.5萬億美元的六分之一。