NEW YORK: The yen was lower Friday as criticism surfaced at the G7 finance ministers meeting in Japan of Tokyo’s threat to intervene to halt its rise.
The Japanese currency slipped to 110.15 yen to the dollar and 123.59 against the euro.
Meanwhile, the dollar pulled back against the euro to $1.220 after two days of gains on the rising chances of a Federal Reserve rate hike in June.
Japan’s repeated statements that it could move in the market to force the yen lower stirred up criticism at the G7 meeting just underway in Sendai.
On Friday, a senior US Treasury official said the yen’s strengthening did not justify Tokyo manipulating its currency.
“The notion that exchange rate targeting is being used creates a whole different set of questions in terms of reason for it,” the official told reporters.
“If the perception or the reality is that (intervention) is for gaining unfair advantage that is very disruptive to the global economic system.”
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin also waved off the idea of countries gaining a trade advantage by manipulating their own currencies.
“Today we are in a cooperation phase, and not in an intervention or a currency war phase,” he told AFP.
