US Adds India To The Currency Manipulation Watchlist

The US on Wednesday added India and others to the watchlist of countries being monitored for currency manipulation. The list also includes major trading partners like China and six others.

The US Treasury also said that India and Singapore had also intervened in the foreign exchange market in a “sustained, asymmetric manner” but did not meet other requirements to warrant designation as manipulators.

India didn’t able to attain the manipulator standard as it didn’t have a $20 billion-plus bilateral trade surplus with the United States, foreign currency intervention exceeding 2% of gross domestic product and a global current account surplus exceeding 2% of GDP.

The action comes as the global coronavirus pandemic skews trade flows and widens U.S. deficits with trading partners, an irritant to Trump, who won office four years ago partly on a promise to close the U.S. trade gap.

Other countries in the monitoring list are Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Singapore and Malaysia.