America: Stop lecturing China and do your homework
November 17, 2010 / Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff
RealClearWorld
Barack Obama finally succeeded in uniting the world - just not the way he intended. At the G-20 summit in Seoul, countries almost universally rejected America's ideas for correcting current-account imbalances as well as its second round of quantitative easing (QE2). After an electoral shellacking at home, the U.S. president suffered a diplomatic shellacking abroad. It was one of the darker hours of American economic diplomacy.
For years, the United States has criticized China for its unwillingness to allow the renminbi to appreciate. The undervalued Chinese currency is a key driver of America's large and growing trade deficit with China. It is therefore justified to call the Chinese behavior "currency manipulation." And it is not even the only tool with which the country's authoritarian government artificially improves the competiveness of its economy at the expense of others in the global marketplace.



