Balance commerciale Chine-USA: le yuan doit-il être réévalué ?
Jim O'Neill, Goldman's London-based head of global economic research, says a widening of the yuan's trading band accompanied by a revaluation of around 5 percent would take some of the international political and trade pressure off China.
``Even with a small move to more flexibility it would be difficult for the Senate trade bill related to this issue to continue and it would get them a lot of brownie points with the White House,'' O'Neill said before today's release. ``It would also, importantly, have some positive impact on the growing trade dispute towards China here in Europe as well.''
Like the U.S., European nations including Germany, the U.K. and France have in the past month called on China to allow the yuan to trade more freely. The U.S. and the European Union have also said they may limit textile imports from China to protect local manufacturers after a decades-old global quota system was abolished on Jan. 1.
Pour certains, le remède au déficit de la balance commerciale des Etats-Unis n'est pas lié au taux de change de la devise chinoise:
To begin with, it is not obvious that the yuan is undervalued. The surge in China's foreign-exchange reserves suggests that the yuan is being held down, but this largely reflects short-term capital inflows from investors speculating on a revaluation; these flows could go into reverse. Moreover, if the yuan were set free and capital controls scrapped, the currency might fall as Chinese households and firms diversified into foreign assets. And while it is true that the yuan's trade-weighted value has recently fallen along with the dollar, this follows a period when the yuan was dragged up by a rising dollar: from 1994 to 2001 its real trade-weighted exchange rate gained 30%. Given the uncertainty about the yuan's correct level, it makes more sense to focus on how China can move to a flexible exchange-rate regime—to which its government is committed—than to insist on a specific yuan revaluation.
In any case, a revaluation is not, as commonly claimed, the vital element needed to shrink America's trade deficit. China accounts for only 10% of America's total trade, so a 10% revaluation would reduce the dollar's trade-weighted value by a mere 1%. More generally, although a fall in the dollar is necessary to reduce America's deficit, it is not sufficient. The real solution lies at home: the American government needs to borrow less and households must save more and spend less.
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