NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Treasury Secretary John Snow said Monday he's convinced the Chinese are going to untether their currency from the dollar, that the government's official statements show they've "embraced" the idea.

Really?

Just last week two central bank officials from that country made it sound like the government was not about to do that anytime soon. By pegging their currency to the dollar, the Chinese prevent a declining dollar from hurting their export sales to the U.S. -- in other words, we keep sucking in lots of Chinese imports.

And it makes it tougher for our manufacturers to break into China's growing markets. We now have a trade deficit that is more than $15 billion with China. That's two-and-a-half times our deficit with Japan, the country we use to bash regularly as unfair traders.

It remains to be seen if President Bush will feel so energized by his recent victory to spend any of his political capital in leaning on the Chinese to make a long awaited move to break their peg to the dollar. So far, it looks like the Bush team is talking as if the Chinese are doing something, in hopes that talking will make it so.

Good luck.  

Kathleen Hays is economics correspondent for CNN and contributes to Lou Dobbs Tonight.