Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, his main lieutenant in the Cabinet and Japan’s top foreign-exchange official yesterday pushed back against US President Donald Trump’s assertion that Japan is keeping its currency devalued.
“Japan’s monetary policy is for the domestic purpose of beating deflation, and isn’t done with FX [foreign exchange] in mind, so I think that those remarks are a little bit wide of the mark,” said Masatsugu Asakawa, the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s foreign exchange policy chief.
Speaking at the Japanese National Diet, Abe said that it is not accurate to say that Japan is devaluing the yen, adding that he would explain Japan’s monetary policy to Trump if necessary.
It is important to exchange views, including thoughts on foreign exchange, he added.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga earlier called Trump’s comments “totally inaccurate.”
“You look at what China’s doing, you look at what Japan has done over the years. They — they play the money market, they play the devaluation market and we sit there like a bunch of dummies,” Trump was quoted as saying on Tuesday in a transcript by Congressional Quarterly.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Trump administration took aim at Germany, saying it was gaming foreign-exchange markets.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the accusation.
European Council President Donald Tusk placed the US alongside Russia, China and terrorism as a source of instability.
“The change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation, with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy,” Tusk said in a letter to European leaders on Tuesday ahead of an EU summit tomorrow.
Japan has not recently intervened in the currency market, “so without more explanation, I am not sure what is being referred to,” Asakawa said.
Japanese Minister of Finance Taro Aso on Tuesday said Trump had introduced “a new factor of uncertainty,” which could contribute to a weak yen and strong US dollar for “some time.”
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