It's the potential Trump trade war Asia didn't see coming: a weaker dollar.
A "too strong" greenback is "killing us," then-President-elect Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal, uttering perhaps the only words on the planet that might get China's President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the phone together. What Asia's two biggest economies had going for them is sliding currencies making exports more competitive. Is 2017 the year Asia finally beats its export-led-growth addiction?
First, let's not get ahead of ourselves in renaming the dollar the "peso." As Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday, policy makers expect to hike rates "a few times a year" going forward. Trump's tax-cut and spending plans and calls for repatriating corporate profits held overseas will almost certainly accelerate corresponding jumps in bond yields. Interest-rate differentials will complicate any Trump move to devalue the reserve currency.