U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he told leaders of Japan and China they cannot continue to reduce the value of their currencies as doing so would be unfair to the United States.
“I’ve called President Xi, I’ve called the leaders of Japan to say you can’t continue to reduce and break down your currency,“ Trump said at the White House.
“You can’t do it because it’s unfair to us. It’s very hard for us to make tractors, Caterpillar here, when Japan, China and other places are killing their currency, meaning driving it down,“ he said.
Asked about Trump’s comments, Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato said Tokyo was not taking policies directly aimed at weakening the yen.
Kato told a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday that Japan had confirmed its “basic stance on currency policy” with G7 countries and with the United States, including at a bilateral meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Speaking at a separate news conference, Japanese Economy Minister Ryosei Akazawa said on Tuesday the government intervenes in the currency market only when yen movement is “speculative”. (Reporting by Leika Kihara and Makiko Yamazaki; additional reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto; Editing by Nia Williams and Christopher Cushing)
