Is Paul Krugman a Yuan/Dollar Hypocrite?

Back in 2003, Krugman wrote an opinion piece criticizing then President Bush for, among other things, asserting that the Yuan was overvalued.

Recently, Krugman wrote an opinion piece praising Congress for asserting the Yuan was overvalued.

Does this make Paul Krugman a hypocrite?

In a word, "no".

This is because many things have changed since 2003. One important thing is the relative value of the Yuan which has increased in value relative to the dollar (most of the increase coming from June 2006 to Jan 2009). In addition, the US economy is different (back in 2003, it was relatively strong).

One problem that Krugman has here however is that, in 2011, he does not cite his own earlier work and briefly describe why the situation is different (some suggest that he is embarrassed that the economy is so much worse under Obama than under Bush but actually, I think Krugman is simply too lazy or too focused on his own thoughts this instant to look back - anyway, that is not relevant to the hypocrisy argument).


Krugman's 2003 piece is here.
Krugman's 2011 piece is here.
The yuan/dollar chart is from here.