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The booming U.S. stock market will help keep the dollar expensive as global investors pour money into America, a foreign exchange strategist said. But the politics of any trade deals that the incoming Trump administration might negotiate are a wild card.
The dollar surged against global currencies last year and looks to remain strong in 2025 if global investors continue pouring money into the booming U.S. stock market, according to Societe Generale chief foreign exchange strategist Kit Juckes.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday, he said the neutral interest rate—the level that neither speeds up nor slows down an economy—is higher in the U.S. than in Europe.
“If my neutral rate is higher than your neutral rate, my currency ought to be going up forever,” Juckes explained. “It’s not a stable equilibrium, if we have these big divergences in neutral policy rate.”
But that disparity is largely priced into the dollar already, he added. In recent months, the greenback has been lifted by the Federal Reserve signaling fewer rate cuts in the coming year as the economy chugs along, inflation remains sticky, and policies from President-elect Donald Trump are expected to add upward pressure on prices.
By contrast, top economies in Europe are faltering, and analysts expect the European Central Bank to cut rates more aggressively. China’s slowing growth is also spurring policymakers there to roll out more easing measures.
While the economics of the global currency market are clear, politics represent a wild card, Juckes said. Trump’s vow to impose across-the-board tariffs, which could result in trade deals, are key.
In his view, any deal that helps the U.S. would also have to be good for global trade, which would improve growth outside the U.S. and weigh on the dollar.
At the margins, politics will be more important than straight-ahead economics, but from a strictly economic perspective, the dollar will remain strong for the foreseeable future, he said.
“It’s a really expensive currency that will stay expensive as long as the rest of the world is shoveling all of its savings into the United States to see how much money it can make out of the U.S. equity market,” Juckes predicted.
That echoes recent warnings about so-called American exceptionalism, which is marked by U.S. dominance in global markets.
Last month, Ruchir Sharma, chair of Rockefeller International, said “the mother of all bubbles” in the U.S. is sucking money away from the rest of the world.
“Thoroughly dominating the mind space of global investors, America is over-owned, overvalued, and overhyped to a degree never seen before,” he said in a Financial Times column.