MARKET NEWS

By Dan Burns

(Reuters) -No major U.S. trading partner manipulated its currency in 2024, the Treasury Department said on Thursday in the first semi-annual currency report of President Donald Trump's new administration, although its "monitoring list" of countries warranting close attention grew to nine with the addition of Ireland and Switzerland.

While it did not label China a currency manipulator for now despite "depreciation pressure" facing its currency, the yuan, Treasury issued a stern warning to China, saying it "stands out among our major trading partners in its lack of transparency around its exchange rate policies and practices."

"This lack of transparency will not preclude Treasury from designating China if available evidence suggests that it is intervening through formal or informal channels to resist (yuan) appreciation in the future," Treasury said in a statement.

Treasury said China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland were on its monitoring list for extra foreign exchange scrutiny.

Countries that meet two of the criteria - a trade surplus with the U.S. of at least $15 billion, a global account surplus above 3% of GDP and persistent, one-way net foreign exchange purchases - are automatically added to the list. Ireland and Switzerland were added due to their large trade and current account surpluses with the U.S.

The Swiss National Bank on Friday denied being a currency manipulator, but said it would continue to act in Switzerland's interests as the strong Swiss franc helped push inflation into negative terrain last month.

"The SNB does not engage in any manipulation of the Swiss franc," it said. "It does not seek to prevent adjustments in the balance of trade or to gain unfair competitive advantages for the Swiss economy."

Trump in his first term labeled China a manipulator in August 2019, a move made then - as now - amid heightened U.S.-China trade tensions. The Treasury Department dropped the designation in January 2020 as Chinese officials arrived in Washington to sign a trade deal with the U.S.

Thursday's report was released hours after Trump spoke with China's leader Xi Jinping for the first time since returning to the White House amid an even more tense trade standoff between the world's two largest economies, and more recently a battle over critical minerals. The countries struck a 90-day deal on May 12 to roll back some of the triple-digit, tit-for-tat tariffs they had placed on each other since Trump's January inauguration.

The latest report covers the final full year of the administration of Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, who over his four-year term never labeled any trading partner a currency manipulator but raised similar concerns over China's behavior and lack of transparency.

Last year was marked generally by broad-based dollar strengthening, with the greenback gaining 7% in 2024 against a basket of major trading partners' currencies. That dynamic made it less likely that Treasury would find evidence of consistent one-way actions by countries to weaken their currencies for competitive advantage, since most currencies were broadly weakening anyway, Treasury officials said.

That could change over the course of this year, with the dollar already down by roughly 9% since Trump returned to the White House and launched a trade war that has global investors rethinking their commitments to U.S. assets. In the current environment, it might be more tempting for countries to step in to try to prevent or reverse the continued strengthening of their currencies, and Treasury officials said they would be watching closely for such behavior.

In the case of China more specifically, Treasury officials said they were looking at broadening their surveillance to include monitoring of the activities of sovereign wealth and state pension funds for any indication these entities were acting on Beijing's behest in the foreign exchange market. They said there was no current evidence of that but it had been a tactic used by others in the past.

(Reporting by Dan Burns, Andrea Shalal and Ann Saphir; additional reporting by John Revill in ZurichEditing by Andrea Ricci and Marguerita Choy)