CHINA/ECONOMY/EU/FEDERAL RESERVE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump accused China and the European Union of manipulating their currencies and continued to criticize the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates, saying those moves are putting the United States at a disadvantage. In a flurry of early-morning Twitter posts, Mr. Trump complained that the Fed’s rate increases and a ‘stronger and stronger’ United States dollar are ‘taking away our big competitive edge.’ He also said the Fed’s plan to raise rates — known as tightening because it makes borrowing more expensive — ‘hurts all that we have done.’ His comments once again break with longstanding White House norms, in which American presidents tend to talk sparingly about the United States dollar and, when they do, generally reiterate that a strong dollar is in the national interest. On Thursday [7-19-18], Mr. Trump drew criticism for saying in an interview with CNBC that he did not like the Fed’s interest rate decisions, comments that also upend presidential protocol to respect the independence of the central bank.”
–Ana Swanson, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport, “Trump Blasts Fed, China and Europe for Putting U.S. Economy at a Disadvantage,” The New York Times online, July 20, 2018