China says it will never use its currency as a weapon in the trade war

The trade war between China and the United States is intensifying, but Beijing has just taken one potential weapon off the table.

Premier Li Keqiang told an audience of global executives and policymakers that China would not weaken the yuan to boost trade with the rest of the world.

"China will never go down the path of stimulating exports by devaluing its currency," Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Wednesday.

His comments came a day after the United States and China announced that they would impose their biggest rounds of tariffs yet on each other's exports, starting next week.
That brings the value of goods hit by tariffs in the escalating conflict to more than $360 billion. President Donald Trump has threatened to hit another $267 billion of Chinese goods with tariffs.
China, which buys far less from the United States than the other way round, is starting to run low on American products to target, raising speculation about what other measures it could take to hit back. 





China, which buys far less from the United States than the other way round, is starting to run low on American products to target, raising speculation about what other measures it could take to hit back.

Sudden drops in the yuan in 2015 and early 2016 set off turmoil in global markets as money poured out of China's economy. Beijing spent hundreds of billions of dollars propping it up.
China will "work to create conditions for keeping the value of the yuan stable," Li said Wednesday.
His words weren't enough to convince everyone, though.
"Manipulation has occurred and is occurring, and I hope that action is taken," Todd Rokita, a Trump-supporting congressman from Indiana, told CNN at the Tianjin conference just minutes after Li's speech.

CNNMoney (Tianjin, China) First published September 19, 2018: 3:26 AM ET