President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he has no problem with the sharp decline in the dollar that’s been triggered by convulsions in global bond markets and growing skepticism about the U.S.’s reliability as a trading partner.
“I think it’s great,” Trump told reporters in Iowa when asked about the currency’s decline. “Look at the business we’re doing. The dollar’s doing great.”
Trump has long maintained that a weaker currency helps industries that he’s seeking to boost — particularly manufacturers, but also oil and gas. And U.S. corporations that export goods and services abroad typically report stronger earnings when they can convert foreign payments into a weaker greenback.
I mean it can be a valid strategy to gain ‘market share’ in the world. China does this successfully. This is good for big exporting companies and sucks for the population regarding buying imported goods.
Because China basically produces everything, the Chinese can simply buy domestic products to offset the negative effect.
But yeah for a country like the USA, which doesn’t produce nearly as much this will just suck. Imported goods will be more expensive (even more so with the genius tariffs) without the option to buy domestic goods because there simply are none.
Perhaps the idea is to stimulate local manufacturing? But I don’t really see a reason why they wouldn’t just explicitly tell us that if that is the case.