MNI: US Treasury Adds Ireland, Switzerland To FX Watch List

The U.S. Treasury on Thursday added Ireland and Switzerland to its currency manipulator watch list, and officials warned continued strengthening of global currencies relative to the dollar could see more foreign exchange market interventions and rising current account surpluses that would land more countries on the list.  

The monitoring list was expanded to include nine economies: China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland. The latter two have been added for meeting the criteria for having a significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States and a material current account surplus, Treasury officials said. 

The Treasury updates its so-called FX report twice a year based on the macroeconomic and foreign exchange policies of major trading partners. Thursday's report looked at data for 2024, when the dollar was strengthening and many central bank intervened to prevent local currencies from depreciating further. The trend reversed this year, and Treasury officials said they plan to study alternate indicators of intervention and whether those need to be included in the next report. 

China remains on the monitoring list for its lack of transparency around its exchange rate policies and practices, as well as its outside trade imbalance with the United States, the officials said. No country met the criteria to be named an FX manipulator. 

Treasury did not amend the thresholds used in this analysis, and officials said there was no need to adjust thresholds at this time as doing so would not change the outcome of the analysis. In Trump's first term, China was designated an FX manipulator.