L'Etat, c'est la grande fiction à travers laquelle tout le monde s'efforce de vivre aux dépens de tout le monde. Frédéric Bastiat

dimanche 15 mai 2005

"CHINA SYNDROME"

Washington exerce sur la Chine des pressions excessives et une réévaluation du yuan suffirait à peine à réduire le déficit commercial américain. L'article des professeurs Hanke et Connolly, publié par le Wall Street Journal:

The clamor for a yuan revaluation is loud. (...) But the yuan quick fix might just be neat, plausible and wrong. Let's investigate:

-- Does China manipulate its currency? It is not possible to give a categorical response to this question because "currency manipulation" is simply not an operational concept that can be used for economic analysis. (...)

-- Is the yuan undervalued vis-a-vis the dollar? No. The nominal yuan/dollar rate has been set in stone at 8.28 since June 1995. Adjusting for inflation in China and the U.S., the real value of the yuan has depreciated by only 2.4% during the last decade. And today the yuan is in equilibrium in the sense that China's inflation rate has converged to the U.S. rate. Not surprisingly, the IMF's most recent Country Report on China concluded that "it is difficult to find persuasive evidence that the renminbi [yuan] is substantially undervalued."

-- Would a yuan revaluation reduce the U.S. trade deficit? Not much, if at all. After a yuan revaluation, the U.S. demand for foreign goods would simply be shifted from China to other countries.

-- Would the House and Senate bills comport with international agreements and U.S. obligations? No. The yuan revaluation required by the Schumer-Graham bill would violate China's rights and sovereignty. Under the IMF Articles of Agreement (Article IV, sec. 2(b)), a member country is free to choose its own currency regime, including a fixed exchange rate. (...)