Donald Trump’s first year as US president has been, if nothing else, a bounteous source of surprises. One of the big ones in the circles I frequent is dollar weakness. Between January 2017 and January 2018, the broad effective exchange rate of the dollar fell by 8%, wrong-footing many of the pundits. I include myself among the wrong-footed (others can decide whether I qualify as a pundit). Tax cuts and interest-rate normalization, I expected, would shift the mix toward looser fiscal and tighter monetary policies, the combination that drove up the dollar in the Reagan-Volcker years. Tax changes encouraging US ... (full story)