U.S. dollar confusion reigns amid 'strategic uncertainty

Currency markets that only a few months ago assumed a trade war would lift the U.S. dollar now suspect that a full-scale devaluation may be underway, suggesting few market players have any clear handle yet on the administration's dollar plans. Much like the scuppered post-election rally in Wall Street stocks, the dollar has been a major casualty of President Donald Trump's unfolding import tariff plan, partly due to what his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent likes to call a trade policy of "strategic uncertainty." If – as we are told routinely – markets hate uncertainty, then the conduct of that policy…