RMB moves; Hong Kong warnings; US farmers suffering; China unhappy about Kashmir

The RMB rumble continued overnight as the US declared China a currency manipulator, a move that is several years too late, not in accord with current reality and generally just looks weak and desperate. The fact is that China has been manipulating the RMB to keep it artificially strong, as the US has wanted, so the message from the Treasury announcement is basically we only get mad when you stop manipulating in the direction the US wants.

The RMB closed with a 7 handle again Tuesday but Beijing appears to be taking steps to prevent a more significant drop, and so far it is certainly nothing like the mishandled devaluation in August 2015. They learned a lot of lessons from that mess.

The impact of the recent RMB depreciation may be significant psychologically but fairly minimal financially, and Beijing knows that it can not let the RMB drop much more without triggering increasing stress over external debt repayment and raising pressure even more for capital outflows.

The signal from Bei…