CPA believes an overvalued dollar makes American goods and services less competitive in global markets. The Competitive Dollar for Jobs and Prosperity Act will create good jobs, rebalance trade and rebuild American prosperity.
Persistent U.S. dollar overvaluation fuels much of America’s global trade deficit by raising the price of U.S. goods and services in global markets. While the United States has an array of fiscal and monetary tools to manage its internal economy, it lacks effective exchange rate management tools to manage trade flows that have a powerful effect on the domestic economy.
For this reason, CPA advocates for The Competitive Dollar For Jobs And Prosperity Act, introduced by Senator Baldwin & Senator Hawley. This bill tasks the Federal Reserve with achieving and maintaining a current account balancing price for the dollar within five years.
A Market Access Charge (MAC) might be the perfect addition to the tariff agenda; a surgical tool to tax capital inflows.
Depending on where you get your information, you would be forgiven for believing that we are getting buried by inflation, the stock market is in shambles, and that we need to start hoarding Chinese yuan to pay for our morning lattes.
Tariffs were supposed to be inflationary, but so far, they’ve been proven wrong. Inflation over the last several months was not caused by 10% tariffs on Southeast Asia, nor by the short-lived 145% tariffs on China.
Decades of misguided trade policies have transformed the United States into the world’s consumer of last resort, absorbing the world’s excess savings at the expense of its manufacturing sector. U.S.-imposed tariffs are the first step towards rebalancing the system, but they aren’t sufficient.
Varoufakis’ essay is a must-read for CPA members curious about what a former G-20 Finance Minister (the equivalent of our Treasury Secretary) thinks about the dollar.
On day one of the new administration, rather than any new tariffs, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum titled America First Trade Policy.
