When elephants fight it out it is the little guys that get trampled on, says Thailand's finance minister Korn Chatikavanij, referring to the stand-off between the US and China over currencies. His fear is that global trade will be disrupted at a time when Thailand's economy and exports are growing strongly and the domestic political situation appears to have cooled down. The country faces the problem of its own currency, the baht, appreciating too rapidly and pricing Thai goods out of the market.
In an interview during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in October, Mr Korn used the elephant metaphor twice, once in terms of the US-China conflict and, second, in reference to an absence of public discussions on the issue.
