The U.S. Department of the Treasury today delivered to its semiannual Report to Congress on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States. In this Report, Treasury reviewed and assessed the policies of major U.S. trading partners, comprising more than 80 percent of U.S. foreign trade in goods and services, during the four quarters through June 2021. In accordance with the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 (the 1988 Act), the Report concludes that no major U.S. trading partner manipulated the rate of exchange between its currency and the U.S. dollar for purposes ... (full story)

Following a steep contraction of the global economy in 2020 due to the impact of COVID19, recovery began to take hold in 2021; the IMF projects global growth of 5.9% in 2021 after a 3.1% contraction in 2020. The recovery has been most pronounced in economies that undertook strong macroeconomic policy support and where a larger share of the population has been vaccinated – though the COVID-19 Delta variant has complicated the full resumption in economic activity for most. Where policy space and vaccine distribution has been more limited, recoveries are nascent or weak, leading to a divergence in global growth. The ... (full story)