Accountability and Oversight of U. S. Exchange Rate Policy

The dispute over Chinese exchange rate policy within the United States has generated a series of legislative proposals to restrict the discretion of the US Treasury Department in determining currency manipulation and to reform the department's accountability to the Congress. This study reviews the Treasury's reports to the Congress on exchange rate policy—introduced by the 1988 trade act—and Congress's treatment of them. It finds that the accountability process has often not worked well in pr…