THE DIGITAL PRINTER-copier-scanner, made by Lexmark in China for export to the United States, was going for $59.96 at Circuit City last week.
China's move on Thursday to strengthen its currency, which Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said "will be a significant contribution toward global financial stability" when phased in, would raise the device's price, assuming the cost is passed along, to $61.16.
That's a 2 percent difference - $1.20. Kind of puts all the hullabaloo in perspective, doesn't it?
"It's a baby step," says Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wachovia Corp. "It's probably not going to mean that much in the way of prices."
Or anything else in the economy, for that matter.
Theoretically, an increase in the value of China's yuan against the dollar would cut the U.S. trade deficit and ease pressure on American workers from inexpensive imports.
That's why American politicians have badgered Beijing for years to unfasten the yuan-dollar link, which they said was too low and made Chinese goods artificially cheap on world markets.
Last week China seemed to comply, nudging up the exchange rate, harnessing the yuan to a basket of currencies instead of just the dollar and promising to let it fluctuate accordingly.
But the more likely result is business as usual - except with a couple extra after-dinner toasts when Chinese President Hu Jintao visits President Bush in September.
China hopes the change "will be enough to get the political hacks in the United States off their back and allow them to continue to de facto run a very strong link with the dollar," says Steve Hanke, a currency expert and professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University. "They might continue to do exactly what they've been doing."
Unlike the euro, Japanese yen and other major currencies, the yuan's value is set not by freely acting traders on foreign exchange markets but by financial authorities in its home country.
For more than a decade, Beijing has fixed the yuan's value at 8.28 to the dollar. It made the peg stick by buying Treasury notes and other dollar-denominated securities with the billions that U.S. consumers spend on Chinese goods each year.
At that rate Chinese manufacturers have been able to undersell global competitors, especially in the United States, where Chinese imports have contributed to losses in factory jobs as well as the bargains we've come to expect at Wal-Mart and other retailers.
