No, China Didn’t Suddenly Stop Manipulating Their Currency When Trump Was Elected

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Here’s a snippet from the Economist’s interview with President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The subject is whether China is manipulating its currency in a way that hurts the United States:

Trump: They’re actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.

Mnuchin: Right, as soon as the president got elected they went the other way.

It’s tiresome to hear Trump say this, and doubly tiresome to hear Mnuchin chime in like a toady about it. Yes sir, Mr. President, they stopped as soon as they realized a real man was about to occupy the White House!

Here’s all you need to know about Chinese currency manipulation:

All the way through 2013, China’s foreign reserves increased nearly every quarter. This was because they were buying lots and lots of dollars as a way of keeping the value of the yuan low, which made Chinese exports cheaper and American imports more expensive. In mid-2014 they stopped. Since then, they’ve mostly sold their dollar holdings, to the tune of a trillion dollars over the past couple of years. During this entire time the yuan has been falling on its own, and the Chinese intervention has had the effect of propping it up to prevent it from falling even faster. This makes Chinese exports more expensive and American imports cheaper, which is exactly what we want.

As for November 2016, nothing happened. I don’t know if Trump knows this, since he seems to live in some kind of alternate reality, but Mnuchin does. So does everyone else.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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