US President Donald Trump called China a currency manipulator in a tweet last Friday, right before the Chinese yuan dipped to a 13-month low of 6.5569 against the US dollar on Wednesday.

Frank Ackerman, a principal economist at Synapse Energy Economics said that he didn’t see any evidence for currency manipulation. However, he remarked that “the exchange rate has returned to about what it was in the first half of last year. I’ve seen that in looking at the dollar against many currencies. I think that the change has been in the value of the dollar, not in the value of the yuan or other currencies around the world.” 

“We have a president who apparently loves to make announcements by Twitter in the middle of the night and they do not always agree with what people discover in the daytime with serious research,” Ackerman added.