China’s monetary policy: Manipulation or foreign aid to Americans?

Here’s Robert Samuelson writing in today’s Investor’s Business Daily:

To be clear: China’s currency manipulation has been real and harmful to U.S.-based firms and workers. By a variety of estimates, Chinese exports have probably cost 2 million or more American jobs since 2000.

That’s only part of the story, here’s my contribution to telling the rest:

To be clear: China’s currency manipulation has been real and harmful  beneficial to U.S.-based firms and workers consumers who have purchased China’s products at reduced prices thanks to China’s policy of strengthening the dollar. By a variety of estimates, Chinese exports have probably cost 2 million or more American jobs since 2000 saved American businesses and consumers billions of dollars and helped create millions of American jobs. 

MP: We should think of China’s currency manipulation as a form of foreign aid, and to the direct advantage of millions of U.S. consumers, especially low-income groups, and to the direct advantage of thousands of American companies buying inputs from China. As I concluded before in The American in 2011 (“Why We Should Thank the Chinese Currency Manipulators“): If you wouldn’t object to China sending products to the United States for free, then on what basis would you object to currency “manipulation” that allows you to purchase undervalued Chinese imports at a huge discount and at a great bargain?

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