Hu knew. Chinese president Hu Jintao knew that upon coming to Washington for Obama’s nuclear security summit he would have to have a serious chat about currency with President Obama and Secretary Geithner. Hu also knew that he wasn’t ready to cooporate.
On Monday, talks between the three economic power players (Jintao, Obama, and Geithner) ended in a total lack of budging on the part of the Chinese. Hu said that revaluing the yuan would not only not solve trade imbalances between the two countries, but it wouldn’t help U.S. employment either.
America begs to differ. And once again, AAM has a map to prove it.
As U.S. policymakers have strongly encouraged domestic consumption,
“exports, for now, remain a major engine of economic growth in China, a reason why the government has kept the yuan virtually re-pegged to the dollar since mid-2008 as China’s export sector was hit by the worst global economic downturn in decades. The move followed a more than 21% appreciation in the yuan against the dollar between mid-2005 and mid-2008.”
According to an Associated Press article on the meeting, “The yuan was only one of several issues Obama and Hu discussed — Iran’s nuclear program chief among them. Bader described the meeting as ‘positive and constructive’ and the presidents are ‘familiar and comfortable with each other.’ ”
We’ll wager that China taking its sweet time revaluing the yuan doesn’t sound positive nor constructive to the millions of Americans that have lost, and are still losing, their jobs.
On top of this, Hu made a few demands of his own, including urging the United States to “loosen its export controls over high-tech products.”
Read more about the meeting here, here, and here.
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