What a stronger Chinese yuan means for the US
A sharp rise in China's yuan currency might cut the US trade deficit by as much as one third and create enough American jobs to put at least a modest dent in the unemployment rate.
Then again, it may also lead to a destabilizing spike in Chinese unemployment and spark a trade war that drags the global economy back into a deep recession.
These are the conflicting forces US lawmakers must consider as they decide whether to pass a bill which would pressure Beijing into letting its currency rise more rapidly.
The debate over whether China's currency is undervalued is essentially closed. Beijing readily acknowledges that a gradual yuan appreciation is in its best interest, and it has allowed the currency to rise by about 6.5 per cent since June 2010.
Where the disagreement lies is how far and how fast the yuan ought to appreciate.
"The Chinese will scream, but the only times they've let their currency rise is when they're under pressure from the outside, so we should go ahead and do it," said Fred Bergsten, director of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics and a long-time critic of China's currency policy.
Bergsten is among the most vocal proponents of increasing the pressure on China, arguing that an undervalued yuan gives it an unfair trade advantage which harms the US economy.
He estimates that a 20 per cent rise in the yuan would reduce the US current account deficit by $50 billion to $100 billion. A more extreme move, say 40 per cent, would translate into as much as a $200 billion reduction.
About half of that would come from increased exports, mostly to China but also to other countries where China is now the dominant trade player. The other half would come from reduced imports from China.
The United States gains about 6,000 jobs for every $1 billion improvement in the trade balance, so $100 billion would work out to 600,000 jobs, he said. That is more than the anaemic US economy has generated in the past six months combined, and would be enough to shave about four-tenths of a point off the 9.1 per cent jobless rate.
Bergsten's view is not universally shared. Some economists argue that a stronger yuan would simply shift manufacturing to other low-cost producers such as Bangladesh or Vietnam, and the United States would still be uncompetitive.
"An appreciation of the yuan against the dollar would indeed reduce the US trade deficit with China, but it is unlikely to have a major effect on US job creation," said Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official who now teaches international trade policy at Cornell University in New York.
China's state-owned Xinhua news agency was also dismissive of job creation claims.
"There has been no evidence to prove the link, claimed by the US lawmakers, between China's exchange rate and the US unemployment," Xinhua said in an English-language commentary published on Tuesday, adding that Washington "has to share a great part of the blame" for the trade imbalance.
The 2011 US trade deficit was $428 billion through July, up from $367 billion over the same period in 2010, according to US Commerce Department data.
China accounts for about 37 per cent of the 2011 total.
THE FLIP SIDE
For China's economy, a stronger yuan would reduce economic growth and increase unemployment, although there is a wide range of opinions among economists as to the magnitude.
Deutsche Bank economist Jun Ma examined this in June 2010, when China relaxed its grip on the yuan. His study showed that a 10 per cent yuan appreciation would reduce real gross domestic product by 0.6 per cent, a relatively modest hit in an economy growing at more than 9 per cent annually.