Though President Donald Trump says the U.S. dollar is too strong, an economist at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy said the president doesn't have policy tools to push the dollar down.
"The dollar will ultimately be determined by the mix of monetary and fiscal policy more than anything the president or his administration says,” said Russell Green, the Will Clayton Fellow in International Economics at the Baker Institute. “Officials can only move the dollar if markets think it signals a change in future action."
“Trump has no credible policy tools at his disposal that would push the dollar down,” said Green, a former U.S. Treasury Department official. “The Fed is slowly tightening, and Trump has big new spending plans paid for by a border adjustment tax and is threatening tariffs. All four of those put upward pressure on the dollar.”