Well, the Trump administration is on a world tour and predictably, things went awry almost immediately.
U.S. traders woke up to news that upon touching down in Switzerland, Treasury Secretary (and man who isn’t used to being the poorest guy in the room) Steve Mnuchin was quick to beat the trade war drum.
The greenback, already under tremendous pressure from all angles and sitting at its lowest level since December 2014, took a fresh leg down when Mnuchin told a news conference that “a weaker dollar is good for U.S. trade”. It was all downhill (literally) from there:
DXY is now under $90 for the first time in a long ass time:
In keeping with the Trump administration’s pattern of someone saying one thing early in the morning and everyone else trying to do damage control for the rest of the day, Wilbur Ross attempted to Wilbur-splain why Mnuchin didn’t mean what Mnuchin definitely meant. Here’s what Ross said on CNBC:
He wasn’t advocating anything. He was simply saying, it’s not the world’s biggest concern to us right now. What he exactly said was the dollar, just like the Treasury bond market, is a huge market, a very liquid market, it’s not something we worry a lot about day by day.
Even if you’re buying that, it still comes across as decidedly not diplomatic. That is: “We”, “we”, “us”, “us”, “America”, “America”, etc. etc. In other words: just what Trump wants them to say.
And look, if you don’t want to take Wilbur’s word for it when it comes to how Mnuchin and Trump definitely aren’t trying to get the upper hand in a trade war, just ask noted FX strategist (and pissed off mom in line behind you at Target who is going to give the kids one more fucking chance not to touch the Skittles), Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
Press Sec. Sanders: “We still very strongly believe that we have a very stable dollar and that that’s a good thing” #tictocnews pic.twitter.com/o4rK9lNPb1
— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) January 24, 2018
