US Includes Korea in Currency Watchlist... China, Germany and 7 Other Countries

On the Exchange Rate Watch List Since April 2016

The U.S. government has decided to maintain its existing policy of designating South Korea as a currency monitoring country.

On the 17th, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released its 2023 mid-year currency report, including seven countries such as South Korea, China, and Germany as currency monitoring countries.

On the 12th, dealers were busy moving in the Hana Bank dealing room in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Dongju Yoon doso7@

Under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act enacted in 2015, the U.S. designates countries among the top 20 trading partners that meet certain criteria as either enhanced analysis countries or monitoring countries.

The current criteria include a trade surplus in goods and services with the U.S. exceeding $15 billion, a current account surplus exceeding 3% of GDP, and net purchases of dollars exceeding 2% of GDP for at least 8 out of 12 months.

If a country meets all three criteria, it is subject to enhanced analysis; if it meets two criteria, it is designated as a monitoring country.

Since April 2016, South Korea has met two of the criteria except for the first half of 2019. It has been included in the monitoring country list every time since April 2016. The U.S. Treasury maintains countries as monitoring countries for at least two consecutive reports to account for possible temporary changes. This time, South Korea met only one of the three criteria?the trade surplus ($37 billion)?but was still maintained as a monitoring country.

If South Korea meets only one criterion again in the second half of this year’s currency report, it is expected to be removed from the monitoring country list starting from the second half report.

Switzerland, which was classified as an enhanced analysis country in last November’s report, has been changed to a monitoring country this time. The current monitoring countries include South Korea, China, Switzerland, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Japan, which was a monitoring country in the previous report, met only one criterion for two consecutive reports and was excluded from the monitoring country list in this report.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.