Steven Mnuchin, the new US Treasury secretary, has retreated from Donald Trump’s campaign pledges to quickly brand China a currency manipulator, signalling that there was no urgency to draw conclusions about the strength of the renminbi.
Mr Mnuchin said Treasury would proceed with the normal process of determining if China was manipulating its exchange rate, meaning there would be no announcement on the issue before a regular Treasury report due in April.
“We have a process within Treasury where we go through and look at currency manipulation across the board, and we’ll go through that process,” Mr Mnuchin told CNBC. “We’ll do that as we have in the past and we’re not making any judgments until we continue that process.”