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Originally Posted by displacedinMN
Please explain to me what it meant when China devalued their currency.
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Given the trade war and worries about a Chinese slowdown, there are people who want to pull their money out of CNY (the Chinese currency) and put it into other currencies. Chinese manages a semi-pegged currency regime, so in order for the CNY not to depreciate relative to other currencies, the Chinese central bank (PBOC) has been buying CNY to prop it up. The USD/CNY level of 7 was thought to be particularly important as we hadn't crossed that since 2008.
Last week, because Trump decided to threaten 10% tariffs on a further 300bn of important (nb: these are the *really* important consumer goods that will be felt much more by all of us), China basically said, "Look, we're gonna be relaxed about where the CNY ends up fixing. We no longer view 7 as a line in the sand and will no longer buy CNY to keep it below that level." So, they allowed it to cross 7. This has two important implications: 1/ It's clearly an escalation on their side in response to Trump's actions. If one had been hoping for a calming of tensions, this pushed in the opposite direction. 2/ In simple economics terms, China becomes more competitive and exports deflation globally.
Hope this marginally helps.