US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated on August 30 that recent yen movements were « pretty well contained, » refusing to characterize them as disorderly. This position comes a month after a historic joint currency intervention between the United States and Japan, the first US-backed intervention in nearly three decades, during which the United States deployed between $5 and $10 billion while Japan spent a record $96.4 billion to stabilize its currency. The dollar was trading around 160.15 yen after his remarks, slightly above the psychologically important threshold of 160 that was briefly crossed on August 28. Bessent also offered his support to Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda, whom he described as « market-savvy, » while refraining from recommending specific strategies such as consecutive interest rate hikes. Yen stability is crucial for the United States because Japan is one of the largest foreign holders of US Treasuries, and a disorderly decline in the Japanese currency could pressure these institutions to sell dollar-denominated assets to defend their domestic currency positions.
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