Highlights:
- “Mr. Geithner called for the biggest industrialized economies to keep their current-account balance — whether a surplus or a deficit — below 4 percent of gross domestic product.”
- “Officials from Britain, Canada and Australia quickly expressed support for the idea, but Germany expressed resistance and Japan seemed ambivalent. China, whose currency battle with the United States has threatened to derail the process of global economic cooperation, had not formally weighed in.”
- “The United States, Canada and Britain have trade deficits, while China, Germany and Japan have surpluses. China’s current-account surplus is currently 4.7 percent, and the United States’s deficit is 3.2 percent. Of the G-20 countries, Germany (6.1 percent) and Russia (4.7 percent) also have sizable surpluses.”
- “The proposal in essence tries to set a numerical target to achieve the broad but vague mantra of “strong, sustainable and balanced growth,” to which the G-20 countries agreed in September 2009 in their meeting in Pittsburgh.”
