WASHINGTON - The U.S. Treasury Department said Thursday that China, Japan, Thailand and seven other major trading partners remain on a watchlist that Washington monitors for potentially unfair foreign exchange practices.
In its biannual report to Congress, the department did not designate any trading partner as a currency manipulator, which could result in the imposition of U.S. sanctions.
But the report, which assessed economic and currency practices in 2025, said, "China continues to stand out among our major trading partners in its relative lack of transparency around its exchange rate policies and practices."
The seven others on the "monitoring" list are Germany, Ireland, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Vietnam.
For the list, three criteria are used to assess whether a country may be manipulating its foreign exchange rates to gain an unfair trade advantage.
A major U.S. trading partner is put on the list if it meets two of the three criteria, which are a trade surplus with the United States of at least $15 billion, a current account surplus of at least 3 percent of gross domestic product and engaging in persistent, one-sided interventions in foreign exchange markets.
Regarding Japan, the report said it did not step into currency markets during the period and "remains exceptionally transparent about its intervention activity, publishing monthly intervention in aggregate and detailed daily intervention once a quarter."
The report also noted the yen's continued weakness despite shrinking U.S.-Japan interest rate differentials.
"While global factors such as financial market volatility and oil prices have likely affected the yen, excess volatility in the yen is undesirable," it said.
