The U.S. Has a Clear Warning for Emerging Markets

The Treasury Department has a warning for the emerging world: The export-your-way-to-prosperity template has fallen out of favor. Once thought to be in U.S. interests — as a way of getting plentiful cheap goods — this model of development is now meeting more skepticism. The message for Asia should be loud and clear, even if some economies got a pass last week.

In its semiannual assessment of trading partners’ foreign-exchange policies, Treasury stopped short of labeling Taiwan, Vietnam and Switzerland as currency manipulators, even though they met the criteria. In normal times, they would have been branded with a Scarlet M for deliberately holding their currencies down. But officials couldn’t determine whether their less-than-ideal practices were done to seek a trade advantage, or simply to buttress markets and alleviate recession. The pandemic skewed capital flows globally, and many countries — the U.S. among them — responded in kind. This time, the trio got away with a rap on the knuckles. The softer approach is a shift from the Trump administration, which tagged Hanoi and Bern as manipulators, and admonished a bunch of others, including India, Thailand, Singapore and South Korea.