The United States, while showing a strict attitude towards India, has also put it in the ‘monitoring list’ of currency manipulators, along with ten countries like China, Taiwan. America has put ten countries including India in this list. They are all its big business partners.
Apart from India, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are on this watch list. The United States has already placed Vietnam and Switzerland in the category of currency manipulators. The US Finance Ministry has given this information in a report presented in Congress on Wednesday.
The report of news agencies said that in its last four quarters up to June 2020, four major trading partner countries of the US – India, Vietnam, Switzerland and Singapore have continuously interfered in their foreign exchange market. The report noted that Vietnam and Switzerland have identified potentially inappropriate currency debris or excessive external imbalances that have impacted the US growth or have hurt American workers and companies.
US Finance Minister Steven T Mnuchin said that the Finance Ministry has taken a strong step today to protect the economic growth and opportunities of American workers and businesses. The report of the US Ministry of Finance says that these 10 countries need special monitoring and Taiwan, Thailand and India are being added to this list.
How are currency manipulators decided?
The US Treasury Department uses three parameters to place currency manipulator ‘tags’ on countries.
- That country’s bilateral trade surplus with US $ 20 billion
- In a year, more than 2 percent of the GDP of that country should be net purchases of foreign currency
- The global current account surplus means that the surplus of the current account is more than 2 percent of GDP.