Reply #30: Prestowitz urges Koizumi to call for 'Plaza Accord II' at G-8 [View All]

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060328/kyodo/d8gki7284.html

(Kyodo) _ Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should take the lead at a Group of Eight meeting in calling for a "Plaza Accord II," former U.S. trade negotiator Clyde Prestowitz said Tuesday.
"We all need to cooperate on diminishing the role of the dollar in international trade," said Prestowitz, now the president of the Economic Strategy Institute which he founded, at a lecture at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.

Even though Koizumi is going to step down from the premiership in September, he is in a good position to suggest that G-8 leaders adopt a new Plaza Accord to help reduce current global economic imbalances similar to those seen in the mid-1980s, when the first accord was struck, Prestowitz said.

The 1985 Plaza Accord was signed by the then Group of Five economic powers to coordinate foreign exchange policies. Troubled by a large trade deficit, particularly with Japan, the United States under the administration of President Ronald Reagan aimed to bring down the value of the U.S. dollar against other major currencies.

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