Quote Originally Posted by Med Pie View Post
Trump wants a weak $$$$ to make imports cheaper but, he will penalise imports by levying massive tariffs, said to be, to encourage people to buy American so I suppose it could work on two levels.

Cheap imports where massive tariff is collected - win

Discourages importation and creates a demand for home produced goods which will create jobs - win

He can probably get away with holding the value of the $ down to some extent because most Americans don't travel abroad. I read a stat that said 85% of Americans don't even have a passport.

What do I know.
No! That's wrong!

Trump wants a weak dollar to make exports from the US to other countries cheaper.

Trump (or any other president) can't really decide the value of the dollar. The Chairman of the Federal resserve decides interest rates, which are probably the main factor in the strength of a currency, because they stimulate or reduce demand for that currency. Higher demand for a currency means 'price' goes up, price in this case being exchange rate. The dollar got stronger the day after election day and has kept getting stronger ever since because currency traders are effectively betting that the Fed won't be able to reduce interest rates as it had announced it would (I think they had pre-announced 3 or 4 rate cuts of .25% in 2025) because Trump's policies are inflationary. This was confirmed by the chairman of the Fed in his last policy meeting, as he changed his line from 3 or 4 cuts in 2025 to 'we need to wait and see the data from Trump's policies'.

Holidaymakers don't really get a say in all of this to be honest. There are trillions of dollars of debt to service, trade deficits and surpluses to think about plus lots of other stuff. Nobody really cares if Karen has to fork out a couple more cents for her pi?a colada in Cancun.