Worldwide Financial Planning

Despite a large number of companies raising concerns about tariffs, investors in US equities have been in positive mood as the S&P 500 and many other major equity indices ended April very close to where they started.

Last week, I covered how the dollar was used as a weapon and ‘geopolitical tool of compliance, punishment and hierarchy’, and this week I’ll turn to the exodus which followed and is following. If freezing $300 billion in a country’s sovereign assets was the warning shot, the world has since responded, not in protest, but in action.

After a wild round-trip, markets are heading back to where they were at the start of the month, before Trump’s ‘liberation day’ tariffs sparked the sell-off. But not much has significantly changed – US imports are now subject to 10% tariffs, while the more punitive rates are suspended, not cancelled.

In itself, it’s a two-part sub-series – the problems of weaponization, and then what they are doing about it, but it’s very important in the overall understanding of the future of the dollar and the motivation and where we might one day find peace. Long sigh.

Hopefully you may remember my comments on dedollarisation in June 2023 – ‘it will happen’. This journey of explanation of dedollarisation turns to the calamity and farcical charade that is - tariffs.

The US president unveiled a sweeping package of additional tariffs on US imports, with the largest hikes being added to goods from its biggest trade partners. But Trump and his trade advisers are in a very small minority that think these measures will be anything other than damaging to US and global economic growth.