The best part of this is that they are being called a manipulator for not shoring up their currency artificially.
That said: this is what trade wars look like, folks. If we didn't want to fight in one we shouldn't have started it. The currency-manipulated status quo of the past two decades or so has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and made the world richer than it ever has been.
But no, someone's gotta score domestic political points based on a poor understanding of economics and some intuition about how to make a good populist argument.
The simple irony is that if the Chinese were just to give up manipulating the RMB all together, Trump would be even more angry.
Everyone manipulated, the Japanese and Koreans do it, even the Swiss do it. The only thing that the Chinese do differently is have non market exchanges and currency controls on convertibility. (And their central bank is much less independent than the fed).
And, did China meet the criteria before this latest move?
(And, minor nit: criterion is singular. Criteria are plural.)
What I find humorous is that this particular move seems to be driving the currency closer to the consensus opinion on where it should be.
Your sentence assumes their currency should be low, and they raise it, but evidence is the other way around.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/u-s-treas...
Check the June quote from Mnuchin where he promises to do this if they stop propping their currency up.