BRUSSELS – German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called on the Group of 20 to denounce the “manipulation” of currency rates, reflecting concerns that Japan is trying to push down the yen to gain a trading advantage.
“Exchange rates shouldn’t be manipulated,” Schaeuble told reporters after a Monday meeting of eurozone finance chiefs in Brussels. “There aren’t any exchange rate problems with the euro and in the euro, but there are concerns in connection with other major currencies.”
The euro has outperformed the world’s nine other leading currencies in the past six months, rising 7.8 percent, according to the Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes.
The yen has dropped 20 percent as new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated domestic demand-boosting policies.
Still, divisions within the 17-nation eurozone may lessen the impact of any effort to criticize Japan for seeking to depress its currency at the G-20 meeting in Moscow later this week.
Jens Weidmann, head of the German central bank, echoed several finance ministers in saying the euro is not overvalued.
Finance ministers from the Group of Seven, the core group at the meeting Friday and Saturday in Moscow, will seek to calm concern the world is on the brink of a currency war, two officials from G-7 nations said earlier Monday on condition of anonymity.
Shares of companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Nissan Motor Co. have soared in recent weeks with the yen’s retreat, and economists at banks from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Nomura Holdings Inc. have boosted their projections for Japanese growth.
Monday’s Brussels debate was ignited by French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, who said exchange rates are working against eurozone exporters, making it harder for the economy to bounce back from the recession it slipped into last year.
The euro’s rally is “negative for growth,” Moscovici said. “Exchange rates can’t be subject to moods or speculation.” Without naming Japan, he blamed the euro’s acceleration on “more aggressive practices by some of our partners.”
European officials left open how much pressure they will put on Japan, with ministers from Austria, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg seeing no need for a coordinated international offensive to adjust currency values.
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