Why Romney is wrong about China
China is not "manipulating its currency" any more than the Fed manipulates U.S. currency
Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signs an autograph on a paperback book of his new jobs and plan for the economy after a town hall meeting in Sun Lakes, Ariz.
Ross D. Franklin/AP
About Mitt Romney's bashing of China for "manipulating its currency" (as if the Fed doesn't manipulate the dollar), one can note one interesting thing. Back in 2005, when New York Senator Charles Schumer (D) along with South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham (R) first started proposing bills to slap tariffs on Chinese goods, they estimated that the yuan should be 27.5% more expensive and therefore proposed a 27.5% across the board tariff on Chinese goods .
Yet China has since 2005 increased the value of the yuan by rougly 30%, from 12.1 U.S. cents to 15.7 U.S. cents (In inverted terms, this means that the dollar has dropped from 8.28 yuan to 6.38 yuan). So according to the estimates of the China bashers themselves, China has already ended the undervaluayion of the yuan and has in fact raised the yuan slightly above fair value.