If you asked the Treasury secretary his view of the dollar, the answer would be equally rote: “A strong dollar is in the interest of the United States.” Those words have been so standard
that when Paul O’Neill deviated from it in an interview with a German newspaper in 2001, he caused a kerfuffle in global currency markets and quickly backtracked.
You look at what China’s doing, you look at what Japan has done over the years — they played the
money market, they played the devaluation market, and we sit there like a bunch of dummies.”
Taking the president’s words at face value, we would seem to be in for a deliberate effort by the administration to reduce the value of
the United States currency relative to its neighbors, in hopes of giving U. S. exporters an advantage and reducing the trade deficit.
“The currency is very, very strong, and what you see is people from all over the world wanting
to invest in the U. S. currency,” Mr. Mnuchin said in his confirmation hearing.
The Trump Team’s Message Is Garbled -
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For a very long time, if you asked United States government officials their view
on the value of the dollar, they would almost certainly decline to answer.
