December 2020 Update - U.S.-China Economic Report
Cathay Bank | UCLA Anderson Forecast U.S.-China Economic Report
December 2020
The election is over with and there will be a change in administrations come January 20th. However, that does not eliminate all of the uncertainty with respect to U.S. economic policy. There could well be a divided Congress, and the outgoing administration may have some new directives that were not previously forecast. However, over the past two years, in a country that has harbored divided views on domestic policy, a rare consensus on a fundamentally changed view of U.S. economic engagement with Beijing has developed.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - 1:15pm
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in October set in motion a process that could result in the imposition of U.S. tariffs on billions of dollars of imports from Vietnam. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business representatives have argued against the tariff threat, which is tied to the alleged undervaluation of Vietnam’s currency.
Helpfully, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has established clear criteria for evaluating whether a trading partner is engaging in currency policies that maintain an undervalued currency. Treasury is required by law “to monitor the macroeconomic and currency policies of major trading partners … if they trigger certain objective criteria that provide insight into possibly unfair currency practices,” as explained in its most recent report (January 2020) entitled “Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.”