[dinobones]

On paper, nothing will happen. The wealthy in America will continue to get wealthier. Real estate and stocks will soar in value.

In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet. The FED is starting to lower interest rates again. We are likely going to undergo brutal inflation.

Crashing the economy is obviously very politically unpopular. The left/right will do whatever they can to keep this charade up, even if it means dooming the working class and throwing them some kind of bone to make them think they're ok.

The COVID pandemic was a good example of this. The working class got thrown a $2,000 check while there was billions given to bail out businesses/lots of fraud. Not a lot of people cared because hey, we got a $2k check... Even though that $2k check was not even close to maintaining their relative wealth pre-pandemic due to all of the government's inflationary measures.

There won't be a recession, it won't happen on paper. But the middle/working class will continue to be squeezed. And there will be programs to "rescue us." Maybe it's low cost home programs, maybe it's community college, I'm not sure. But I am sure it will never truly benefit the working/middle class, it'll just be a token to keep them from fully dying.

[epistasis]

The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this year. It's expected that 2026 will have an equal dollar devaluation. This is the best-possible interpretation of the goals of this administration, the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord that is somehow supposed to help some part of the economy. It's unclear who or how, to me.

[mgh95]

> The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this year.

Compared to what? From Nov 3, 2024: the USD against:

GBP (3)%

JPY (1.7)%

EUR (6.7)%

INR 4.6%

AUD 1.3%

CAD .74%

RMB .4%

The EUR (if that is what you are going by) is unusually strong, and that's actually starting to cause issues. But the dollar isn't "collapsing".

[jjav]

> > The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this year.

> Compared to what?

In terms of the DXY "US Dollar Index"

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DX-Y.NYB/

[mgh95]

The dixie is weighted heavily towards the Euro (~58% weight). The euro is enough to move the index independently of other movers.

[Sammi]

Is the euro weighted at 58% for a reason?

[mgh95]

Its fixed at that proportion by the index cboe. The dixie weakening is indistinguishable from the euro strengthening

[cogman10]

The BRL or CNY is probably one of the most apt comparison given the BRICKS alliance. That's where you are seeing the roughly 10% swing since Jan. (if you go back to last Oct the swing is less pronounced. IDK exactly what was happening last Oct, but there appears to have been an upswing in dollar value from Oct to Jan and a steady decrease of the dollar value since.)

[seanmcdirmid]

RMB is CNY and listed.

[mgh95]

In October of last year, people were betting on Trumps election leading to tariffs leading to a stronger dollar. This trend continued post-election pre-inaguration. Since the tariffs did not materialize to the level expected, the dollar weakened to its levels prior to his election.

[epistasis]

Your explanation makes no sense. First, nobody thought that Trump would actually go through with the tariffs because it's an insane plan and that wiser people in the administration would restrain Trump. So the dollar started to devalue when people realized that "holy shit these tariffs might actually happen." The tariffs are way way bigger than anybody expected.

The entire goal of the tariffs were to weaken the dollar:

> The Mar-a-Lago Accord is a proposed economic and trade initiative of the Donald Trump administration during his second term. Named after Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the Accord is a blueprint for restructuring global trade and monetary relations. Its core goal is to devalue the dollar while preserving its role as the world reserve currency, a careful balancing act intended to avoid the contradictions described in the Triffin paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_Accord

[mgh95]

No, ordinarily tariffs result in currency appreciation (see https://www.wto.org/english/blogs_e/ce_ralph_ossa_e/blog_ro_... for an accessible discussion).

But yes: weaking the dollar was the goal, but the US did not achieve that to the degree of something like the Plaza accords.

[watwut]

> would actually go through with the tariffs because it's an insane plan and that wiser people in the administration would restrain Trump.

What is insane is to assume republicans picked by Trump will restrain Trump. The adults in the room theory was disproven long before that election.

Trump 1.0 had tarriffs. Trump talked abput tarrifs. People in fact assumed Trump will do tarriffs, they just slightly underestimated how bad the trade war will be.

[mgh95]

Reply, since I cant edit: even the commentators agrees it's looking increasingly necessary to weaken the euro: https://archive.is/biCxs

[epistasis]

https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-de...

[mgh95]

That operates on calendar year. That is primarily due to the rapid appreciation of the USD vs global based after Trumps election on the perception that tariffs would be far higher and more continuous than they actually were.

The truth is, the currency markets are roughly where they were about a year ago, with the exception of EUR, but thats a special case which I think is a symbol if a misstep by the ECB.

[epistasis]

Yes, the calendar year matches what I was talking about, and more closely matches the current economic policy of the US. It wasn't until February that the real economic and foreign policy of the US became clear, and the full insanity of it all is still sinking in.

I'm not sure why your hand-picked list of currencies is revelant, or why your particular dates are relevant. The course for the future looks to be a greater devaluation of the US currency.

This is the goal of the Trump administration and what is apparent to analysts.

[mgh95]

> I'm not sure why your hand-picked list of currencies is revelant, or why your particular dates are relevant. The course for the future looks to be a greater devaluation of the US currency.

What other currencies do you believe are important? We pulled 2-5 of the most commonly used reserve currencies and some other ones as well.

[wqaatwt]

> The EUR (if that is what you are going by) is unusually strong

By what standards? It’s slightly above the trend (i.e. continuous decline since 2008 with an occasional up and down here and the) but not that substantially

[mgh95]

It's substantial for the eurozone economy, namely their exporters. The machinery sector in particular is under major pressure as a result of the stronger euro.

[jltsiren]

EUR was unusually strong from 2004 to 2015. Since then, it has almost always been between $1.07 and $1.20, which I would consider the normal range.

[mgh95]

The EUR is unusually strong, in part due to fiscal tightness by ECB (see their balance sheet L2 Liabilities here https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/annual-reports-financial-sta...) compared to the US. This is having a knock-on effect that the EUR strengthens against the dollar, which actually causes a whole host of problems for an export economy.

It's why you see Lagarde calling for a reserve EUR; it's the only way to export EUR at this point. But that's a topic for another time.

[jltsiren]

I don't see any evidence that EUR is particularly strong against USD. Except maybe if you take a very short-term perspective. There is always some volatility in exchange rates, and export businesses that cannot tolerate 10% swings in either direction are not viable in the first place.

[mgh95]

> I don't see any evidence that EUR is particularly strong against USD. Except maybe if you take a very short-term perspective.

Yes; this is a short term perspective. Europe is functionally an export market and these currency fluctuations hurt badly. For example, Mercedes-Benz had a consolidated profit margin in '22 of around 9%. These swings do either force loss of jobs (bad) or require a devaluation of the currency.4

[_heimdall]

Comparing against other currencies are tricky, they often move in a similar direction at different rates.

[mgh95]

Exactly what people are saying here (the USD is weakening at an alarming pace! Americans are going Weimar Republic!) isn't borne out in the data. We aren't seeing the USD weaken against other countries in an independent manner. That's the point; not to prove that we are seeing a stalwart dollar, but that we are seeing roughly "business as usual".

[_heimdall]

There are concerning scenarios when all currencies lose, or gain, spending power at a similar rate.

[mgh95]

Sure, but I think we are seeing the US's future more in France at the moment than a secular decline against all other developed nations. There are very real questions about how society is structured that need to be resolved, but the US is far from alone or the worst in that regard.

[colechristensen]

>The COVID pandemic was a good example of this. The working class got thrown a $2,000 check while there was billions given to bail out businesses/lots of fraud.

A lot of people were paid more to not work during COVID restrictions than they earned before or after. $653 billion in federal funds for unemployment programs.

People were getting $600 per week from the feds for a while, then $300/week. Not a single $2000 check, $2400 per month. About the bottom 25 percentile were brought up to 25th percentile income.

[jrs235]

>Crashing the economy is obviously very politically unpopular.

But not something one worries or cares about if one doesn't worry about having to be elected and/or is willing to use the military to suppress dissent...

So tanking the economy is a way to keep and maintain power...

[ponector]

>> In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet

But it's good. There is no way to bring back manufacturing jobs to the US while dollar is strong.

Also high inflation may make housing more affordable.

[eecc]

If manufacturing is to return to the USA, it will be as fully automated as technically possible. So forget about jobs, there won't remotely be as many as needed to "reboot the working class"

[spwa4]

The effect of weakening the dollar is not to return manufacturing jobs to the US while allowing the same dollars to buy the same products. It's to make imported goods more expensive so domestically produced ones win out in the marketplace, both in and outside of the US. To make you switch because your favorite products become too expensive.

It's to make you chose Californian wine over French one, so to speak. Whether you are in the US or elsewhere.

If technological advancement is going to kill the working class, this might slightly accelerate that development but it does not change it one way or the other.

[eecc]

I still don’t understand the point of all this exercise. In the long run, without a fairer redistribution of wealth within US society (which isn’t going to happen with these polices and the politicians pushing them) forcing re-shoring will still result in higher prices overall: expensive Made in USA products, and expensive imports due to a weak dollar. So why?

[vkou]

> In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet.

It already has. It's down ~12% vs the EUR. It's even down 4% vs CAD, and Canada's on the front line of having its economy destroyed by Trumponomics. When the global markets have more confidence in the Canadian dollar than the American one, good luck...

[hotep99]

It's probably much higher than that in reality if you look at assets spiking compared to the dollar. Gold is going completely parabolic right now. Real estate shows no signs of slowing down. Crypto (regardless of your opinion of it) is spiking as people try to store value anywhere besides the dollar. We hear about the AI bubble propping up equity markets all the time but I always wonder how much of it is just investors desperately converting dollars into anything else with a bit of liquidity.