“The global economy is facing its greatest challenge in modern times. Families in Michigan and across the country are having a hard time putting food on the table,” said Stabenow. “I frequently hear from workers worried about finding good paying jobs and businesses that are unsure how long they will be able to keep their doors open. I’m fighting to level the playing field for them. Now, this crisis is an opportunity to reflect on the mistakes of the past and update our financial laws to ensure that they are fair and transparent. Our laws must provide mechanisms to cite countries for manipulating their currency and also provide remedies, so U.S. workers are not put at a competitive disadvantage.”

Currency manipulation is the practice by which a government achieves an unfair trade advantage by artificially lowering its currency’s value providing a subsidy to their domestic firms, enabling them to undercut American businesses and workers. Stabenow has been a long-time proponent for legislation that outlines clear standards by which to identify and punish countries that manipulate their currency.

Provisions in the Stabenow legislation:

• Ensures that standard remedies are put in place to offset the subsidy effects when a government undervalues its currency. Currently, such U.S. trade remedies have not yet been applied.

• Provides an explicit definition of when currency misalignment occurs and directs the U.S. Department of Commerce to measure whether a country's currency is fundamentally misaligned. These calculations will be public and will use reliable data available from the IMF as well as the two primary methodologies and guidelines that the IMF follows in its computations of exchange-rate misalignment.

• Provides a solution for any currency undervaluation. The intervention can be offset by means of either countervailing duties or antidumping duties. These remedies are imposed only when the U.S. International Trade Commission determines that the unfair practice has caused or threatens to cause material injury to U.S. companies and workers. Also, it focuses on the effect or impact of the exchange-rate misalignment regardless of the purpose. Imposition of only one or the other remedy of countervailing and antidumping duties will be allowed to prevent “double-counting.”

• Directs the U.S. Department of Commerce to treat currency undervaluation as a prohibited export-contingent subsidy.

U.S Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Jim Bunning (R-KY), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) co-sponsor this legislation.