That’s partly why, despite some mixed messaging after he took office in 2017, Trump has been fixated on a weak dollar for much of his adult life: In 1987, he took out full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe lamenting the dollar’s strength against the weakness of Japan’s “brilliantly” managed yen. Kenneth Rogoff, formerly the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, told me that because the exchange rate is governed by so many different factors, the president wishing for a weaker dollar is “like doing a rain dance.” One of those factors is interest-rate policy—which is why the Federal Reserve usually has far more influence over the dollar’s value than the president does. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. dollar has been by far the world’s most dominant currency: Banks around the world tend to lend and borrow in dollars; many transactions that don’t touch America are conducted in dollars; and nearly 90 percent of trades on foreign-exchange markets happen by way of dollars.
Author: Will Gottsegen
Published at: 2026-02-04 23:23:00
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