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2 days agoaccording to at least Varoufakis, that’s actually part of the plan.
I don’t pretend to be smart enough to understand this completely but the way I get it: if the dollar depreciates and (eg) the Euro becomes stronger, then people in the EU will find it more convenient to buy US goods, basically offsetting the effect of the tariffs that the EU has applied to counter US ones.
On the reverse, US tariffs + strong Euro will make it even less convenient for people in the US to buy goods from the EU. This, in Varoufakis’s interpretation of Trump’s plan, will help rebalance the trade deficit of the US vs these other countries.
I’m not saying that it’s a good plan, just that these are not random actions by a senile and vengeful old man. Trump says a lot of things but some of these he’s been saying pretty consistently since at least 1987, which makes me think he actually believes them. The paid ad he ran back then is already mentioning:
So, yes, that’s what a Great Again US looks like to Trump: manufacturing jobs back, weaker Dollar, trade surplus, less debt and NATO countries investing more in their own protection. Now there’s a whole lot of scary things about HOW he’s trying to get there: antagonizing allies, fanning a dangerous trade war while letting a couple of actual wars spiral in unpredictable ways… But old man Trump is still trying to move in the direction his greasy, younger self from the pic on Snopes said he would move.