Senator Schumer’s insistent threats of protectionism in respect of China had earned him the nickname “Smoot” Schumer. His advocacy for punitive 27.5% tariffs against China hearkened back to the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, one of the most disastrous pieces of legislation in American history. Fortunately, however, Senator Schumer has now changed his mind.

After a weeklong jaunt through China, Mr. Schumer announced that he believes the Chinese are making “progress” on their currency policy. Neither he nor Senator “Hawley” Graham of South Carolina, mind you, has abandoned the quest to foist foreign exchange policies on China. Mr. Graham is still beating the drum. Mr. Schumer is slowing his drive for tariffs only because he thinks China is complying with the senators’ demands.

We don’t mind saying that it’s nice to see Mr. Schumer coming to his senses. “Anyone who thought carefully about it knew he couldn’t go through with it,” a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Phillip Swagel, noted in respect of Mr. Schumer’s tariff quest. Mr. Swagel says that the Chinese did their part to help the senator save face; all along, they’ve been following the revaluation policy he wanted, albeit at a slower pace than he was willing to countenance.

Americans, however, are not out of the woods yet. The Chinese currency continues as an object of obsession on Capitol Hill. The Treasury Department is pelted periodically by congressional demands that it study China’s currency “manipulation,” and hearings abound.

Study it they should, because it has worked. The nominally communist leaders of China have lit on the insight that a stable currency is a boon. Such stability is particularly important in the case of developing economies, which need to try especially hard to woo investors. In the late 1990s, a scad of China’s Pacific Rim neighbors abandoned their dollar pegs and promptly contracted a debilitating case of Asian flu.

Nor have the Chinese been the only beneficiaries of their currency peg. Americans have come out winners, too. China’s allegedly undervalued currency has allowed the Treasury to “overcharge” the Chinese for the bonds that fund our debt. The peg benefits millions of lower income Americans, who have the option of buying Chinese-made goods at relatively low prices. American legislators often evince scant appreciation for this.

Instead, the fashion is to use the yuan as a scapegoat for a host of ills only marginally related to the currency peg, such as high labor costs effected by behind-the-times unions. The only surefire way to aggravate all of these problems would have been the 27.5% tariff that was offered up as a solution to the China Problem. Now that Smoot Schumer is taking punitive tariffs off the table – at least for the time being – the Senate will have a chance to catch its breath and weigh some of these problems. China has decided to allow its currency to fluctuate slightly. That’s its business. Let our own Congress worry about how to reduce our taxes.