Fed Chair Jerome Powell Addresses US Dollar Weakness, Says Markets Are in ‘Unusually Challenging’ Circumstances

The Chair of the Federal Reserve says financial markets are dealing with a unique set of circumstances that may be contributing to dollar weakness.

In a recent testimony to the US Senate, Powell tells members of the Senate’s banking panel that while the US dollar appears to be doing better, the Fed has yet to formally form an opinion on the matter.

“I would go back to the thought that markets have been digesting an unusually challenging set of circumstances and have reacted the way they reacted. The dollar has kind of stabilized just now, in fact it’s moved back up in the last couple of weeks a bit. There are plenty of people who are still writing that the dollar is still overvalued, we don’t have a view on that of course…

I don’t really have an official view I’d like to share, [but] I think there are possible explanations…one of which is that people still feel the dollar is highly valued, but we’ll see.”

Touching on the subject of tariffs, Powell says markets are in uncharted territory since tariffs have only ever been going down for many decades.

“We’ve been going through a long period where tariffs have been going down. Since World War 2 really, it’s been a process of lowering tariffs globally…

There isn’t a lot of modern learning on that. One of the reasons [now] is so challenging is that we don’t have modern precedent.”

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