TORONTO, Ontario, Canada - October 7, 2010 - The global race to the bottom in currencies may be less a war than it is an inevitable reaction to the growth of developing countries and the need for export-driven economies to stay competitive.

That's the view of experts who, while not wholly subscribing to the idea of a currency war, believe weakness in the U.S. dollar, Chinese yuan and other major global currencies represents what could be the early days of a trade battle triggered by the strength of emerging markets.

While countries have different reasons for devaluing their currencies, one of the common threads is a desire to keep up with the cost of goods from other export-driven nations in the global marketplace.

This battle goes well beyond trade, however. A weaker dollar has pushed up commodity prices worldwide, with gold and other precious metals hitting record highs. Stocks and bonds also have been vulnerable to fluctuations in foreign-exchange markets.

The latest effort at devaluation came from Japan on Tuesday when its central bank nudged its target interest rate to zero, which the U.S. stock market took as provocation for the Federal Reserve to embark on another easing round of its own.

"I don't think we're in a fully fledged competitive devaluation environment at the moment," said Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist at TD Securities in Toronto. "Certainly there is the desire against the backdrop of a very uncertain global growth outlook to get any advantage that particularly the exporting countries of the world have."