U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Tuesday said that a strong dollar is in the United States best interests.

In his first major speech since taking office last month, Paulson said at New York's Columbia University that he would adhere to a strong dollar.

"I believe that a strong dollar is in our nation's interest and that currency values should be determined in open and competitive markets in response to underlying fundamentals," Paulson said. Copies of his remarks were distributed in Washington.

He said the U.S. economy was strong, but was in transition to a slower and more sustainable pace of expansion after growing for several years at a rate too swift to continue.

"It would appear that what we are seeing is the economy transitioning to a more sustainable rate of growth, similar to the pattern we saw in the mid-1990s," he said.

Paulson, 60, was nominated in May to replace former Treasury Secretary John Snow, a shake-up aimed at finding a more effective spokesman for the administration's stalled second-term economic agenda.

The White House hopes that Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, will bring the same star power to this administration that Rubin, another former Goldman Sachs chief executive, brought to the Clinton administration, according to U.S. media.

Source: Xinhua