When China’s central bank last week triggered the two biggest single-day falls in the renminbi since the 1990s, plenty of people were keen to proclaim a resumption of the currency wars that have been a feature of the global economy since the 2008 financial crisis.
But if Beijing’s move prompted a predictable political response from currency warriors in Washington and other capitals, it ignored what many trade economists see as an increasingly well-documented fact: currencies are not the trade weapon they once were.
In a new study of 46 countries including China, economists at the World Bank found that currency devaluations were these days only half as effective a tool for boosting exports as they were in the mid-1990s.
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