Manufacturing executives are lobbying US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to pressure China into allowing a greater strengthening of its currency.
The National Association of Manufacturers' China Business Task Force will meet with Paulson, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab on Monday before the officials visit China the following week.
A group of Chinese officials will also come to Washington this week to help prepare for Paulson's trip.
"Their major goal is currency," JP Fielder, a spokesman for the association in Washington, said on Friday.
"They will also talk about intellectual property rights, subsidies and the trade deficit," he said.
The meeting with Paulson will be at the Treasury Department, he added.
Paulson, Schwab, Gutierrez and other officials are seeking to ease tensions between the two nations over currency policies and a US trade deficit that's approaching an all-time high.
Some companies, unions and legislators say that Beijing is keeping the yuan artificially low, giving its exporters an unfair advantage.
China pegged the yuan to the US dollar until July of last year, when it was revalued and linked instead to a basket of currencies.
The yuan has advanced 5.5 percent since China ended the peg, closing at 7.8360 in Shanghai on Friday.
The government limits the yuan from rising or falling more than 0.3 percent a day.
"We want to build a strategy that will allow the yuan to appreciate at a greater rate than it is now," Fielder said.
The US trade shortfall with China reached a record US$23 billion in September, from US$22 billion in August, the Commerce Department said on Nov. 9.
Paulson's trip to China on Dec. 14-15 is marks the beginning of the new China-US Economic Dialogue. Paulson and Wu Yi (
Paulson said at the time he hoped the US could use the new forum to convince China to allow its currency to appreciate and open its capital markets.
In the last two years, as many as 27 trade bills directed at China have been introduced in the US Congress, according to Stephen Roach, chief global economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS