Congress, Treasury, and the Accountability of Exchange Rate Policy: How the 1988 Trade Act Should Be Reformed

C. Henning
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引用次数: 9

Abstract

The controversy within the United States over Chinese exchange rate policy has generated a series of legislative proposals to restrict the discretion of the Treasury Department in determining currency manipulation and to reform the department's accountability to Congress. This paper reviews Treasury's reports to Congress on exchange rate policy—introduced by the 1988 Trade Act—and Congress's treatment of them. It finds that the accountability process has often not worked well in practice: The reports provide only a partial basis for effective congressional oversight. For its part, Congress held hearings on less than half of the reports and overlooked some important substantive issues. Several recommendations can improve guidance to the Treasury, standards for assessment, and congressional oversight. These include (1) refining the criteria used to determine currency manipulation and writing them into law, (2) explicitly harnessing US decisions on manipulation to the International Monetary Fund's rules on exchange rates, (3) clarifying the general objectives of US exchange rate policy, (4) reaffirming the mandate to seek international macroeconomic and currency cooperation, (5) requiring Treasury to lead an executivewide policy review, and (6) institutionalizing multicommittee oversight of exchange rate policy by Congress. Legislators should strengthen reporting and oversight of broader exchange rate policy in addition to strengthening the provisions targeting manipulation.
国会、财政部和汇率政策的责任:1988年的贸易法案应该如何改革
美国国内对中国汇率政策的争议引发了一系列立法提案,以限制财政部在确定汇率操纵方面的自由裁量权,并改革财政部对国会的问责制。本文回顾了财政部向国会提交的关于1988年《贸易法》引入的汇率政策的报告,以及国会对这些报告的处理。报告发现,问责程序在实践中往往效果不佳:报告仅为有效的国会监督提供了部分依据。国会就不到一半的报告举行了听证会,并忽视了一些重要的实质性问题。一些建议可以改善对财政部的指导、评估标准和国会监督。这些措施包括:(1)完善用于确定货币操纵的标准并将其写入法律;(2)明确利用美国关于操纵的决定来操纵国际货币基金组织的汇率规则;(3)澄清美国汇率政策的总体目标;(4)重申寻求国际宏观经济和货币合作的授权;(5)要求财政部领导一次行政范围的政策审查;(6)使国会对汇率政策的多委员会监督制度化。除了加强针对汇率操纵的条款外,立法者还应加强对更广泛汇率政策的报告和监督。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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