Zurich (Reuters) – The Swiss National Bank will not refrain from using interest rates and currency interventions for directing monetary policy, despite the risk of being branding the United States “Currency Manipulator,” his president said on Saturday.
Switzerland is a US cashier in 2020, marked by a currency manipulator compared to the previous administration of Donald Trump, who said that the Swiss had strongly intervened in foreign exchange markets to reduce the value of the Swiss fract.
After claiming that Franc was not weakened to gain a trade advantage, Switzerland later removed the label and that in 2023 he completely removed the treasure -monitoring list.
“The SNB term is to provide stable prices for Switzerland,” President Martin Schlegel told Tages-Anzeiger newspaper when asked if SNB should be particularly careful with currency interventions.
“We have different levers to achieve this goal – interest rates and a course. We stick to this concept.”
The recent emphasis of the bank on interest rates, not the activity on the currency market, was not concessive to US President Donald Trump, Schlegel said.
“This is our concept of monetary policy and we have always solved it in this way. The SNB Policy Rate is our main instrument of monetary policy,” said Schlegel, who took over his duty in SNB in October.
“Devisive market interventions are supplementary measures we use when needed.”
Countries labeled as currency manipulators can face penalties, such as exclusion from the acquisition of the US government.
SNB would also consider reinstating the negative interest rates, to prevent the Swiss frack too strong and prevent the inflation from becoming too low, Schlegel added.
The central banker has increased its appearances for SUB-NULA several times, although in the conversation he admitted that such a policy was not popular.
The negative rates, which SNB used for almost eight years until September 2022, have achieved their goal for Franc to become less attractive, Schlegel said.
“On the other hand, it is clear that negative interest rates are not attractive to savings,” he said. “If we don’t have to, we will no longer introduce negative rates.”
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