The forgotten meeting

With all the hoopla of the ultimately unsatisfying Kagan hearings, the Toronto G20 meetings seem to have been invisible. It was actually a fairly important event, with as much potential impact on the US as the Kagan hearings, and certainly more impact internationally.

And what's more, the US came out of it with a win; although the deal will require real vigilance, American diplomacy and international pressure seem to have finally brought China to curb the Yuan:

China last Saturday announced that it would gradually make the yuan’s exchange rate flexible to its highest level since July 2005 against dollar, indicating that it was ready to break a 23-month-old dollar peg that had come under intense international criticism.

Meanwhile, China is focusing on debt loads and balancing books, which makes sense if it expects its trading position to shift in the face of a currency devaluation:

Advanced economies have committed themselves to at least halving deficits by 2013 or stabilizing and better still reducing government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016.

Canada, already outstanding among Western economies in reining in its financial sector, has promised to meet the goals by as early as next year.

The United States has promised to honor the deadlines because the country had been proposing the reduction and stability for a long time.

And here again the Democrats should be paying attention -- reigning in spending and balancing our books will be a major step toward improved trade relations with China.