The U.S. government has maintained the designation of South Korea as a country of exchange rate monitoring.
The US Treasury Department included 12 countries, including South Korea, China, and Japan, among the countries to observe exchange rates in the second-half exchange rate report released today.
Countries observed included Germany, Ireland, Italy, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico and Switzerland.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has adopted some different criteria for evaluating exchange rate policies starting in this report.
Previously, in accordance with the Trade Promotion Act of 2015, ▲ trade surplus with the US exceeding $20 billion over the past year ▲ current account surplus exceeding 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) ▲ foreign exchange exceeding 2% of GDP for 6 out of 12 months If two of the three items, including the intervention in the foreign exchange market, which purchases the
However, this time, the standard for trade surplus has been adjusted to 15 billion USD, including not only goods but also services, and the current account surplus has been changed to 3% of GDP or the current account surplus is 1% of GDP.
Intervention in the foreign exchange market was also changed to 8 out of 12 months.
Korea was included in the observation list because it was in the US trade surplus and the current account surplus.
Korea has been included in the list every time since April 2016, except for the first half of 2019.
The Ministry of Finance stated that Korea's trade surplus with the US fell briefly below baseline in 2018, but rose again after 2019.
(Photo = Yonhap News)