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Donald Trump leads off with China's currency manipulation in his CPAC speech yesterday
Howard Richman, 3/7/2014

Here's his March 6 speech

Trump was referring to the recent action by the People's Bank of China which brought the yuan down from 16.38 cents on February 5 to 16.31 cents on March 1. You can see graphs of the yuan-dollar exchange rate at the following website:

http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/

During 2013, the People's Bank of Chine let the yuan go up relative to the dollar, rising from 15.9 cents in February 2013 to 16.4 cents in January 2014. It is too early to know whether the recent short-term trend will continue.

Countries manipulate their exchange rates in order to give their products an advantage over foreign products in world markets. When the price of a currency manipulating country goes down, relative to that of a victim country, producers of the currency manipulating country gain a price and/or profits advantage over producers in the victim country. As a result, businesses of the currency-manipulating country tend to increase their market share in world markets.