The United States Treasury has complained about the high savings rates in China, Thailand and Vietnam while adding Thailand to its list of economies whose policies “merit close attention”, according to a recent report.

“For several major trading partners, an excessive regulatory burden hinders the investment and private sector-led activity necessary to support economic dynamism,” the Treasury says in its latest semi-annual report, released on January 29, which focuses on the macro-economic and foreign exchange policies of its 20 major trading partners.

“In some countries, high savings rates, beyond what would be implied by demographics, are propagated by weak social safety nets [that are] holding back consumption,” the report to Congress states. “China, Thailand and Vietnam are notable in this regard.”

Ageing populations in China, Thailand

“China’s ageing population, alongside its inadequate social safety net policy, have incentivized greater household precautionary savings,” the report notes. “Financial repression leaves households with few avenues to channel these savings, leading to correspondingly low household consumption.”

Similarly, in Thailand, the report points out, “the rapidly ageing population implies an elevated need for precautionary savings to pay for medium-term age-related expenses. Incentives for precautionary savings are amplified by gaps in the social protection system. Additionally, domestic investment has been weak for much of the last decade.”

And in Vietnam, “social protection is underfinanced,” the Treasury adds, “which increases household precautionary saving and restrains consumption.”

Closer scrutiny of Thailand’s surpluses

The latest list of trading partners whose currency practices and macroeconomic policies “merit close attention” by the Treasury also appear in the report.

Seven Asian economies are included in the latest report – China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand — along with Germany, Ireland and Switzerland.

“All except Thailand were on the monitoring list in the June 2025 Report,” the Treasury says, adding that Thailand met two of three criteria for its inclusion.

First, its bilateral goods and services surplus with the US was US$54 billion in the 12 months to June last year — exceeding the threshold of US$30 billion, which the Treasury considers a “significant” surplus.

Second, its current account surplus was 3.8% during the same period, which surpassed the “material” surplus threshold of  3%.

However, Thailand did not breach the third threshold, whereby repeated net purchases of foreign currency in at least eight out of the 12 months comes to at least 2% of GDP is considered by the Treasury to be “persistent, one-sided” market intervention.

Among the 20 economies monitored, only Singapore breached the intervention threshold, as its net purchases came to 3.1% over the period. The city-state also eclipsed the current account threshold but not that for the bilateral trade imbalance given its deficit in goods and services trade with the US.

No trading partner in the latest report met all three of the criteria used by the Treasury to assess the macroeconomic and exchange rate policies of its major trading partners. Thus, no partner requires “enhanced analysis” at this stage.