Draghi rebuts Trump lines on currency wars, bank rules

FRANKFURT/ BRUSSELS • Mario Draghi took the Trump administration to task, addressing recent assertions that Germany is a currency manipulator and warning against the rollback of post- crisis financial regulation.

Speaking at a hearing in Brussels on Monday, the European Central Bank president responded to the charge by U.S. National Trade Council director Peter Navarro and others that Germany is using a “grossly undervalued” euro to gain an unfair trade advantage.

“The ECB has not intervened in the foreign exchange markets since 2011,” Draghi told European Union lawmakers, adding that Germany’s trade surplus was the result of productivity gains.

“Germany has a significant bilateral trade surplus with the U.S ., a material current account surplus, but it has not engaged in persistent one- sided intervention in the foreign exchange market.”

In a question-and-answer session punctuated with lawmakers’ concerns over the shifts in global economic and financial policy brought about by the change of government in Washington, Draghi also hit out at the U.S. president’ s moves to begin dismantling the Dodd-Frank Act.

Rolling back the compendium of financial rules intended to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis would be “very worrisome,” he said.

“The last thing we need at this point in time is a relaxation in regulation,” Draghi said. “Frankly, I don’t see any reason to relax the present regulatory stance which has produced a stronger banking and financial services industry than before the crisis.”

The euro was little changed as Draghi spoke, trading at US$1.0790 at 6:02 p.m. in Frankfurt.

Draghi was also asked to address concerns that the U. S. will now tear up its previous negotiating stance with regard to the Basel III global financial rule book, currently in the midst of a contentious finalization procedure.

A key U. S. l awmaker wants the Federal Reserve to halt its participation until the new administration has reviewed their work.

“We have to see what exactly the U. S. administration wants to do with respect to negotiations of the Basel treaty,” Draghi said.

“The combination of easy money and financial deregulation was exactly the ground upon which the financial crisis developed.”

Euro- area policy- makers have been caught off guard by the speed with which the new U. S. government has been willing to challenge established trans-Atlantic practice, from apparent support for anti-EU forces to implicit attacks on monetary policy.

Indeed, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble this week diverted atten- tion to the ECB, in saying the euro- dollar exchange rate is too weak for his nation.

The spat also obscures the 19-nation currency bloc’s relatively good economic performance of late.

Draghi underlined that euro- area economic sentiment is at the highest in five years and unemployment is falling to single digits.

Euro- area output has been “solid” in every quarter since 2015, Draghi said, averaging 1.9 per cent in annualized terms.

That said, in introductory comments on ECB policy and the euro- area economy that largely echoed his press conference of Jan. 19, Draghi said current stimulus settings reflect a recovery that isn’t yet strong enough to stand on its own.

“Our December decisions” show “our growing confidence that the euro area’s economic prospects are firming up, ” Draghi said.

“At the same time, the lack of a clear sign of sustained convergence of inflation rates toward the desired level” is taken into account.

Even as inflation in the euro area jumped around the turn of the year, reaching a close-to-target 1.8 per cent in January, the ECB’s view is that current gains are largely driven by energy prices and don’t warrant a discussion about tightening monetary policy yet.

The ECB will trim i ts bond- buying program to 60 billion euros (US$64 billion) per month in April from 80 billion euros a month.