The U.S. Dollar Is Riding High. Trump Could Put an End to All That.
美元高歌猛进。特朗普可能会结束这一切。

The U.S. Dollar Index, or DXY, which ranks the dollar against a basket of currencies, was up nearly 7% in 2024, adding to a longer strong run by the currency. That’s despite Fed rate cuts, persistent worries about the stability of U.S. finances, and other macroeconomic concerns. How President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs, tax cuts, and the Fed will affect the dollar is a crucial question for investors in 2025 and beyond.
美国美元指数（DXY）衡量美元相对于一篮子货币的表现，在 2024 年上涨近 7%，进一步延续了该货币的强劲走势。这一上涨是在美联储降息、对美国财政稳定的持续担忧以及其他宏观经济问题的背景下发生的。总统当选人唐纳德·特朗普关于关税、减税和美联储的计划将如何影响美元，是 2025 年及以后投资者面临的一个关键问题。

For a read on dollar dynamics, Barron’s reached out to Karthik Sankaran, a former foreign-exchange trader and portfolio manager. Sankaran’s insights on macro strategy—and his hand-drawn charts and legendary dad jokes—have won him a devoted following in the markets.
为了了解美元动态，巴伦周刊联系了前外汇交易员和投资组合经理卡尔蒂克·桑卡兰。桑卡兰对宏观策略的见解，以及他手绘的图表和传奇的冷笑话，使他在市场上赢得了忠实的追随者。

Sankaran recently joined the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft as senior research fellow in geoeconomics in the Global South program. The Quincy Institute is a think tank that advocates for restraint in U.S. foreign policy.
桑卡兰最近加入了昆西负责任国家工艺研究所，担任全球南方项目的地缘经济学高级研究员。昆西研究所是一个智库，主张对美国外交政策的克制。

We spoke over the phone on Dec. 19, the day after the Fed meeting. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.
我们在 12 月 19 日，即美联储会议后的第二天通过电话进行了交谈。以下是我们对话的编辑记录。

Barron’s: The dollar dipped during the pandemic but has largely risen since then. What explains that?
巴伦周刊：美元在疫情期间下跌，但此后大部分时间上涨。这是什么原因造成的？

Karthik Sankaran: There are a few reasons why the dollar has been as strong as it has. The initial pandemic saw the dollar strengthen just because there was an initial knee-jerk response of flight to safety back into the dollar in March 2020 and soon after. But after that, the scale of the Fed response and its efforts to try and put a cushion under the economy meant dollar strength didn’t persist.
卡尔蒂克·桑卡兰：美元之所以如此强劲，有几个原因。最初的疫情导致美元走强，仅仅是因为在 2020 年 3 月及其后不久，市场对安全资产的初步反应是涌向美元。但在那之后，美联储的应对规模及其试图为经济提供支撑的努力意味着美元的强势并没有持续。

Where you really start getting a much bigger move up is in February 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.             
真正开始大幅上涨的时刻是在 2022 年 2 月，俄罗斯入侵乌克兰。

Why was that?  为什么会这样？

Everything kicked in for the dollar. You had a massive energy shock that hit Europe especially hard. It weighed on the euro and it weighed on Japan because of what the Russian invasion did to global energy prices.
一切都对美元产生了影响。你们经历了一次巨大的能源冲击，尤其对欧洲影响严重。这对欧元造成了压力，也对日本造成了压力，因为俄罗斯入侵对全球能源价格的影响。

You had a traditional safe-haven flow into the dollar, exacerbated at this point by the fact that this was not a financial safe haven but a geopolitical one, where U.S. credentials are even stronger. The euro traded below parity [one dollar per euro] in summer 2022.
你曾经有一种传统的避险资金流入美元，目前这种情况加剧了，因为这不是一个金融避风港，而是一个地缘政治避风港，美国的信誉在这里更强。欧元在 2022 年夏季交易价格低于平价（每欧元一美元）。

With the end of 2022, you started seeing not just more inflationary pressures in the U.S., but also a response by the Fed that was clearly going to be hawkish. Those three things together all meant dollar strength.
随着 2022 年的结束，您开始看到美国不仅面临更多的通胀压力，而且美联储的反应显然将是鹰派的。这三者共同意味着美元的强势。

Now, if I can kind of rewind a little bit to 2014, I think that’s when you get a more long-term story in the dollar, which is U.S. shale production. That’s really important, because what it meant was that while the U.S. could continue to run—and would continue to run—large trade deficits, they were no longer driven by the petroleum deficit when energy prices rose.
现在，如果我能稍微回顾一下 2014 年，我认为那是美元的长期故事开始的时候，也就是美国页岩油生产。这非常重要，因为这意味着尽管美国可以继续并且会继续出现巨大的贸易赤字，但当能源价格上涨时，这些赤字不再是由石油赤字驱动的。

Over a relatively short space of time, the U.S. goes from being an energy importer to being an energy exporter, and the dollar acquires the attributes of a commodity currency. It starts behaving more like the Australian dollar or Canadian dollar because, if I wanted exposure to a currency that strengthens when commodity prices rise, guess what? The U.S. dollar is now one of them.
在相对较短的时间内，美国从一个能源进口国转变为能源出口国，美元获得了商品货币的属性。它开始更像澳大利亚元或加拿大元，因为如果我想要接触到在商品价格上涨时会升值的货币，猜猜看？美元现在就是其中之一。

The DXY index rose 1% after the Fed cut interest rates on Dec. 18. Can you explain that? 
DXY 指数在美联储于 12 月 18 日降息后上涨了 1%。你能解释一下吗？

There’s the specific mechanics: They took one rate cut out [of their expectations for 2025]. They raised the 2025 core personal consumption expenditure inflation forecast more than they raised the growth forecast. And so on.
具体机制如下：他们将 2025 年的预期中去掉了一次降息。他们对 2025 年核心个人消费支出通胀的预测上调幅度大于对增长预测的上调幅度。等等。

But reading between the lines of the press conference, what I thought I heard was something that went, “OK, officially we’re still discussing [the effects of Trump’s agenda], but we have a sense that Trump’s fiscal policy is going to add a little bit to demand. And Trump’s tariff policy will have the same price effect as reducing supply from the rest of the world, which together means we won’t be cutting quite as much.”
但在新闻发布会的言外之意中，我听到的内容是，“好吧，官方上我们仍在讨论[特朗普议程的影响]，但我们感觉特朗普的财政政策将会稍微增加需求。而特朗普的关税政策将产生与减少全球其他地区供应相同的价格效应，这意味着我们不会削减得那么多。”

If you get a combination of tariffs and fiscal policy leading to a strong dollar, to a significant portion of the world, particularly in the global south, it will tighten financial conditions. It makes borrowing more expensive.
如果你得到关税和财政政策的组合，导致美元走强，对于世界的很大一部分，特别是在全球南方，这将收紧金融条件。这使得借款变得更加昂贵。

Those things together can mean people start worrying more about growth outside the U.S., which can then be exacerbated in flows back into the dollar. There’s kind of a vicious circle. Dollar strength can be exacerbated by worries about the financial stability impact on the rest of the world. The effect of that is to actually push more money into the dollar and into the U.S. system.
这些因素可能导致人们更加担心美国以外的经济增长，这可能会加剧资金流入美元的情况。这形成了一种恶性循环。美元的强势可能会因对全球其他地区金融稳定影响的担忧而加剧。其结果实际上是将更多资金推向美元和美国体系。

So, you think that tariffs and tax cuts together are likely to continue to drive up the dollar?
所以，你认为关税和减税一起可能会继续推高美元吗？

Yes, for now. And that’s where you get to the other part of the question, which is, what would happen if some other country tried this? What would happen if another country said, “OK, we’re going to put up massive tariffs, keep out some technologically advanced imports to focus on domestically made goods, and we’re going to blow out the budget deficit.” As a longtime emerging markets guy, I can tell you what would happen: That currency would tank.
是的，目前是这样。这就是你提到问题的另一部分，如果其他国家尝试这样做会发生什么？如果另一个国家说：“好吧，我们要征收巨额关税，限制一些技术先进的进口，以专注于国内生产的商品，并且我们将大幅增加预算赤字。”作为一名长期关注新兴市场的人，我可以告诉你会发生什么：那种货币会崩溃。

Why doesn’t this happen to the U.S.? That’s in part because the negative impacts of this ripple out to the rest of the world. The U.S. is the world’s largest importer of manufactured goods. Tariffs have the potential to slow growth outside the U.S., which can make those markets somewhat less attractive, so money flows back in.
为什么这种情况不会发生在美国？部分原因是这种负面影响会波及到世界其他地方。美国是世界上最大的制造品进口国。关税有可能减缓美国以外地区的增长，这可能使这些市场变得稍微不那么有吸引力，因此资金会流回美国。

People don’t react to the U.S. doing things that would roundly tank the Argentine peso or the Malaysian ringgit if Néstor Kirchner or Mahathir Mohamad had tried them.
人们对美国采取的行动没有反应，这些行动如果是内斯托尔·基什内尔或马哈蒂尔·穆罕默德尝试的话，肯定会导致阿根廷比索或马来西亚林吉特大幅贬值。

You said “for now.” Will this effect be temporary?
你说“暂时”。这个影响会是暂时的吗？

I can’t really go into prognostication, but I think there are ways in which the market might end up reacting negatively to some of these things. The most obvious one is Fed policy. In developed markets, people look at signs of inflation, and they’ll pile into [a currency]. The embedded expectation is that the central bank will be allowed to do its job and hike interest rates, or not cut them.
我不能真正进行预测，但我认为市场可能会以某种方式对这些事情产生负面反应。最明显的一点是美联储政策。在发达市场，人们会关注通胀的迹象，然后会涌入[某种货币]。内嵌的预期是中央银行将被允许履行其职责，提高利率，或者不降息。

The classic example is 1981-85 in the U.S., where you had large fiscal deficits driven by the combination of the Reagan tax cuts and increased defense spending, but U.S. interest rates were high. And the markets said, “OK, we don’t care. We don’t care that much about the large fiscal deficit and the large trade deficit. We are getting high rates here. So we’re just going to pile in.”
经典的例子是 1981-85 年在美国，当时由于里根减税和国防支出的增加，财政赤字很大，但美国的利率很高。市场说：“好吧，我们不在乎。我们不太在乎巨大的财政赤字和巨大的贸易赤字。我们在这里获得高利率。所以我们就会大量涌入。”

The question now is to what extent U.S. political economy is prepared to go through that similar cycle. The signals are mixed. Trump’s first term was one in which he said that he preferred a weak dollar. He didn’t like Powell. If that kicks in again, then that might be something that starts to weigh on the dollar.  
现在的问题是，美国政治经济在多大程度上准备经历类似的周期。信号是混合的。特朗普的第一任期是他表示他更喜欢弱美元的时期。他不喜欢鲍威尔。如果这种情况再次发生，那么这可能会开始对美元产生压力。

That’s something to keep an eye on. Powell’s term is up in May 2026. If there are indications that Trump wants to go with someone less orthodox in terms of monetary policy, then that might be one thing that leads to dollar weakness.
这值得关注。鲍威尔的任期将在 2026 年 5 月结束。如果有迹象表明特朗普想选择在货币政策方面不那么正统的人选，那么这可能是导致美元走弱的一个因素。

If markets think that monetary policy isn’t going to respond to the potential inflationary impact of fiscal expansion, coupled with tariffs, that would not be dollar-positive.
如果市场认为货币政策不会对财政扩张可能带来的通胀影响做出反应，加上关税，这将对美元不利。

A compliant pick for the Fed could precipitate a pullback in global investors’ willingness to invest in U.S. assets.
符合美联储要求的选择可能会导致全球投资者对投资美国资产的意愿下降。

Yes, I think so. My sense is that markets will tolerate fiscal heterodoxy. They will not tolerate a combination of fiscal heterodoxy, trade heterodoxy, and monetary-policy heterodoxy. That’s a trifecta of bad things, basically.              
是的，我认为如此。我的感觉是市场会容忍财政异端。它们不会容忍财政异端、贸易异端和货币政策异端的结合。这基本上是三重坏事。

China and Saudi Arabia are attempting to use China’s renminbi instead of the dollar to settle some of their oil trade. That has led to some worry about the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency. Is that meaningful?
中国和沙特阿拉伯正试图使用中国的人民币而不是美元来结算部分石油贸易。这引发了人们对美元作为全球储备货币角色的担忧。这有意义吗？

At the margin, maybe. But the argument I’ve always made is that what matters isn’t what you settle trade in. 
在边际上，也许是这样。但我一直以来的论点是，重要的不是你以什么进行交易。

The most important function of the dollar in the global financial system is not that it is the leading reserve asset. It’s the fact that it’s the leading nomination of cross-border debt, which is a private-sector thing. Is the renminbi a currency that can be used for large-scale issuance in deep, liquid markets by non-Chinese borrowers? We’re a very, very long way from that.
美元在全球金融体系中最重要的功能不是它是主要的储备资产，而是它是跨境债务的主要计价货币，这是一种私营部门的事情。人民币是否可以被非中国借款人用于在深度、流动性强的市场中进行大规模发行？我们距离这个目标还有很长的路要走。

The renminbi is nowhere near ready for prime time. That won’t change until you get a large amount of issuance in renminbi, including by non-Chinese issuers.
人民币还远未准备好进入主流市场。直到有大量人民币发行，包括非中国发行者的发行，这种情况才会改变。

The time to get excited isn’t when China and Brazil are trading in renminbi. It’s when Vale , the giant iron ore company, is issuing in renminbi. Then the Saudis, who are getting renminbi for the exports of oil to China, can buy something else that’s in renminbi that isn’t Chinese. That’s when it even starts to do some of the things that the dollar does in the world. And we’re nowhere near that.
兴奋的时刻不是中国和巴西以人民币进行贸易的时候，而是巨型铁矿公司淡水河谷以人民币发行债券的时候。然后，沙特人可以用出口到中国的石油获得人民币，购买其他以人民币计价的非中国商品。那时，它甚至开始做一些美元在世界上所做的事情。而我们离这个目标还远得很。

You are concerned about stablecoins. These are cryptocurrencies that are pegged 1-to-1 to the dollar. Why are you worried?  
您对稳定币感到担忧。这些是与美元 1 比 1 挂钩的加密货币。您为什么担心？

Stablecoins expand the dollar’s financial footprint dramatically. What you’re doing is allowing access to dollars to change the currency of your savings on a massive scale across countries. It’s not clear to me that the U.S. wants that.
稳定币显著扩大了美元的金融影响力。你所做的是允许在各国大规模地改变储蓄的货币以获取美元。我不清楚美国是否希望这样。

I personally believe the world would be better served by a multipolar financial system, even though I think we are far away from that for the reasons I just mentioned regarding China. The U.S. still dominates the global financial cycle. But the global real cycle is set elsewhere. China is a very significant part.
我个人认为，世界将更好地受益于一个多极金融体系，尽管我认为我们距离这一目标还很远，原因正如我刚才提到的关于中国的情况。美国仍然主导着全球金融周期。但全球实际周期则在其他地方设定。中国是一个非常重要的部分。

The global real cycle is multipolar. The global financial cycle is unipolar. And that is a bad idea for financial stability.
全球实际周期是多极的。全球金融周期是单极的。这对金融稳定来说是个坏主意。

From a local-currency point of view, if you have, let’s say, a bank in some country that has extended loans in its local currency based on deposits in that local currency and something happens—let’s say it’s an election—and that country’s depositors say, “Oh, I’m getting into stablecoins right now, bye!” That’s a financial stability problem from the point of view of that currency’s banking sector.
从本币的角度来看，如果你在某个国家有一家银行，该银行根据本币的存款发放了本币贷款，而发生了一些事情——比如说是选举——该国的存款人说：“哦，我现在要进入稳定币，再见！”从该货币的银行部门的角度来看，这就是一个金融稳定问题。

It potentially amplifies those strong dollar cycles, which can have really terrible consequences. Almost by design, this kind of thing will happen exactly in those countries that are weaker; that are more exposed to dollar strength.
它可能会放大这些强势美元周期，这可能会带来非常糟糕的后果。几乎是出于设计，这种情况恰好发生在那些较弱的国家；那些对美元强势更为敏感的国家。

If you create a vehicle for people in those countries to pile into dollars and weaken the domestic banking system, you’re just expanding the reach of that U.S.-centric global financial cycle.
如果你为那些国家的人们创造一个涌入美元并削弱国内银行系统的工具，你只是在扩大以美国为中心的全球金融周期的影响。

Thanks, Karthik.  谢谢，卡尔蒂克。

Write to Matt Peterson at matt.peterson@dowjones.com
写信给马特·彼得森，邮箱地址是 matt.peterson@dowjones.com