US: No surprises from the April 2017 Treasury FX report - Nomura

According to the analysts at Nomura, the US Treasury’s April 2017 Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners report contained few surprises.

Key Quotes

“As we expected, no country was identified as an FX manipulator, no change was made to the thresholds that would have raised the probability of countries falling into the manipulator category and there was no extension of the monitoring list to include more major trade partners – China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Switzerland remain on the monitoring list.”

“Following this US Treasury FX report, we expect Asian central banks to continue their USD buying FX intervention (such as KRW, TWD and THB) but with a bit more caution given the risk of trade protectionism ahead. However, for those that are still struggling with capital outflows (namely China), we believe this report makes little difference to intervention dynamics in the near term. We had highlighted the risk of Thailand being included in this report, but even though it was not, our view to be long THB (relative value in the region) is unchanged given the improving macro backdrop, strong capital inflows, FX undervaluation and as the Bank of Thailand will continue to take FX action for the purpose of controlling THB volatility.”