TOKYO (AP) \u2014 The U.S. dollar weakened sharply Monday against the Japanese yen after U.S. President Donald Trump and Japan\u2019s finance minister confirmed both sides had intervened in markets. <\/p>\n
Before late last week, the dollar was trading above 163 yen, touching 40-year highs. After regulators were suspected of stepping in, it fell below 160 yen. <\/p>\n
Early Monday, after the official announcement of the intervention, the dollar dropped about 1% to 156.34 yen. That\u2019s a big change for the exchange rate.<\/p>\n
The yen\u2019s prolonged weakness against the dollar has been a source of frustration for Tokyo. Since Japan imports so much of what it consumes, a weak currency pushes prices higher, increasing inflation. <\/p>\n
Efforts earlier this year to raise the value of the yen against the dollar did little to budge the exchange rate. <\/p>\n
Last week, the U.S. side was suspected of lending a hand. When asked why Washington was helping, Trump said Sunday that \u201cWe have a good relationship with Japan. We\u2019re very strong \u2014- very, very strong financially \u2014 and they are, you know, they have a weakening yen, and they wanted a little bit of help, and we\u2019re always there for Japan. Japan\u2019s been very good to us, with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said the U.S. got \u201cfinancial benefit\u201d out of the intervention, calling it a \u201csignal of friendship.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s also good for the world economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Tokyo, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama issued a statement confirming the intervention, saying the finance ministry had purchased yen in coordination with the U.S. Treasury Department. <\/p>\n
The move followed a joint statement last year and \u201ccountered excessive volatility and disorderly movements in the Japanese yen in recent months,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
It added that the ministry would not hesitate to act further if necessary.<\/p>\n
Such overt acknowledgement of market intervention is rare, said Neil Newman, managing director and head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan. He said the last big example was when governments intervened following a massive earthquake and tsunami disaster in northeastern Japan in 2011.<\/p>\n
A weaker dollar makes U.S.-made goods more competitive, reducing their costs in yen terms, and might help increase American exports to Japan, Newman said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very rare that the Americans will work with the Japanese on this, but there is an alignment of interests here basically between Japan and America,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok. AP journalist Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO (AP) \u2014 The U.S. dollar weakened sharply Monday against the Japanese yen after U.S. President Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":977178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[13214,64,8708,69,57,192955,170,17787,145196,10855,18246,67,132,68,93,107],"class_list":["post-977177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-asia-pacific","tag-business","tag-currency-markets","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-industry-regulation","tag-japan","tag-japan-government","tag-neil-newman","tag-tokyo","tag-u-s-department-of-the-treasury","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117029858623168641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/977178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}