Impotence in the face of reality

I guess this is more of that dreadful economics stuff. But, the Journal quotes our only Secretary of the Treasury in an oddly setup demand/appeal/plea to China. "The Bush administration turned aside demands from Congress and industry that it formally accuse Beijing of "manipulating" its currency in order to give Chinese companies an unfair edge over American competitors. Treasury Secretary John Snow chose the gentler tactic of announcing yesterday that it is "a matter of extreme urgency" that Beijing allow the yuan to rise faster and further against the dollar. " Well, it's not urgent to China; we have an incredibly weak dollar (10 year low against Canada, for the love of God. Canada!) and China is able to make it weaker by keeping their currency weak against it. They did re-value it upwards by 2.1%. Yawn -- there are 8 yuan to the dollar. There were 8 yuan to the dollar before. One Yuan is worth a roaring 12.5 cents...thus, math fans, an increase of 2.1% is damn all -- probably should be a lot higher -- maybe 5:1. However, we let our currency float to make our products cheaper than when we had it pegged to some rate; guess what? Why would they want to do anything different?