<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><b class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;" class="">For Immediate Release</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;" class=""> August 13, 2015 <b class="">Contact:</b> Carolyn Bobb, 202-637-5018<o:p class=""></o:p></span></div><p align="center" style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class=""><b class="">China’s Currency Devaluation Deepens Unfair Trade Practices</b><o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class=""><i class="">AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the following statement after China’s latest currency manipulation:</i><o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">China’s recent currency devaluation – by nearly 4% on Tuesday and Wednesday – provides further confirmation that the failure to include enforceable currency disciplines in the TPP leaves a gaping hole in U.S. trade policy. <o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">China’s currency manipulation lowers the wages of Chinese workers and lowers manufacturing costs in China, creating an unfair trade advantage that has already cost millions of American jobs and closed thousands of American factories. This latest move, which will act as a tax on our exports and a subsidy for Chinese imports, further exacerbates the existing problem.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia are part of the proposed TPP club and they all have a history of egregious currency manipulation. Now, China’s actions risk triggering another round of currency devaluations among these and other TPP countries that will come at the expense of American workers.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">The failure to address currency manipulation and undervaluation, not just by China, has been a major cause of the US trade deficit and manufacturing decline. It has turned trade agreements into trade tragedies and made the trade deficit a major drag on economic recovery.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">Our existing currency policy has failed. This devaluation undoes four years of progress in rebalancing China’s unfair currency advantage. Relying on China’s good will regarding its exchange rate is a dangerous folly that leaves the U.S. economy and working families exposed.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">These developments highlight the importance of insisting that the accession of new entrants to the TPP—should the TPP be concluded and enacted into law—be subject to approval by Congress. And now is the time for the Administration to insist upon currency rules in the TPP that can and will be enforced through trade sanctions. Such rules would also bind China should it ever join such a pact, and those rules could then become a global template for putting an end to the scourge of currency manipulation and undervaluation.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p align="center" style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class=""><b class="">###</b><o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; line-height: 13pt; background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline;" class="">Statement online here: <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/Press-Room/Press-Releases/China-s-Currency-Devaluation-Deepens-Unfair-Trade-Practices" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">http://www.aflcio.org/Press-Room/Press-Releases/China-s-Currency-Devaluation-Deepens-Unfair-Trade-Practices</a></p></body></html>