(Source: CGTN)

After claiming on his presidential campaign trail last year that China was controlling its currency to make its exports more competitive, Trump has now told the Wall Street Journal that China is in fact not a currency manipulator.

In the wake of President Trump's comments, the US dollar slumped to its lowest level against the yuan in nearly two months, as the RMB's mid-point rate rose to its strongest since mid-February.

The US Treasury would also go on to say it wouldn't name China a "currency manipulator" in its-end-of-week report.

But in truth, it hasn't labelled China, nor any of its major trading partners one, since the mid-nineties.

And China's efforts to globalize, and stabilize the yuan -- quite the antithesis of being a currency manipulator -- is already understood among industry experts.

"I think one of the key criterion is the country intervening and to try gain unfair advantage, in terms of the value of its currency. And I think objectively over the last year China is doing the opposite. They've been intervening at their own expense to protect their currency," Former US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said.

President Trump may not have been fully aware of that.

But he has other things on his mind, like securing China's support on the DPRK issue, as a phone call between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday showed.

"President Xi wants to do the right thing. We had a very good bonding. I think we had a very good chemistry together. I think he wants to help us with North Korea. We talked trade. We talk a lot of things and I said the way you're going to make a good trade deal is to help us with North Korea. Otherwise we're just going to go it alone. That will be all right, too," US President Donald Trump said.

Data showed that trade between China and the US showed positive growth in the first quarter of this year. It remains to be seen if that rapport can extend elsewhere.