While we have been focusing on other regions in our most recent articles, one detail often popped up in our analysis: the fact that the American dollar has weakened. Why did that happen? That’s what we’ll try to find out today.
Now, if you take a look back to 2015 and 2016, you’d see the dollar overtaking most major currencies, making consistent gains as the US economy was doing splendidly. The USD experienced volatility around the 2016 Presidential elections, but after Trump’s win investors decided to back him up in hopes that his protectionist policies and focus on infrastructure would boost the economy. As a result, the dollar ended 2016 at record highs and at the turn of 2017 people were already talking of possible parity with the euro, with various temporal prognoses, most commonly by the year’s end.
However, we are now seven months into 2017 and six months into Trump’s presidency, and things are not looking good. Trump has failed repeatedly to find support for his policy-making, and save for his promise to revive the coal industry, he hasn’t achieved much from what was on his campaign’s agenda. Investors have been continuously changing their expectations of his presidency with every passing day, and have little to no confidence in him right now, since polls are showing massive losses in Trump’s popularity among American citizens. This led to a lack of confidence in the American dollar too; the USD has suffered losses, while safe-haven trading instruments such as gold have regained some of their popularity in recent times.
The most recent political fiasco of Trump’s administration is undoubtedly the failed healthcare reform. Republicans have been attempting to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) even before it was enacted years ago. Now that they finally have the upper hand in the Senate, it is astonishing just how poorly this was handled. Republicans kept details about their reform secret; the President expressed support for the bill without having seen it, and later switched his position, calling it “mean.” After a series of failed votes (including from Republican senators), the massively unpopular bill failed. It was then replaced with a plan to simply repeal Obamacare and return things to the way they were. In light of this, however, an estimate of 15 million people would have been left without insurance next year, and even more in the future. Last night even the vote to repeal Obamacare failed.
Could this be the point at which the Republican party admits defeat? Possibly. So far most of the other policy-making had been postponed as efforts were concentrated around healthcare.
The failure to enact his policies is not the only thing troubling Trump’s presidency. The exacerbating scandal around Russia’s involvement in the US elections, as well as the President’s poor diplomatic decisions have weakened the position of the United States as a global leader. This has also been reflected in the American dollar: the EUR/USD is trading above 1.17 and is going to be remain bullish in the foreseeable future.
