US deliberately keeping dollar low, ECB's Nowotny tells newspaper

The United States Treasury Department is deliberately putting downward pressure on the dollar, European Central Bank policymaker Ewald Nowotny said in comments published on Wednesday.

"The U.S. Finance Ministry is deliberately pressuring the dollar and wants to keep it low," Nowotny, who heads the Austrian National Bank, said in an interview with the Wiener Zeitung newspaper that was carried out on Feb. 1.

He added that the European Union should band together more to serve as a counterweight to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump but that the bloc is divided in many areas for reasons including Britain's planned secession from the bloc.