Worldwide Financial Planning

The inflationary impact of tariffs has not disappeared. The rapid policy announcements have disrupted trade flows with US importers rushing orders to beat tariff deadlines before scaling them back. This is disguising any inflationary effect. But price rises appear inevitable for US consumers.

You can think of Kashmir as conflict and headlines, but behind the noise is something far less discussed and far more critical to the new global economic race now reshaping a potential post-dollar world.

With his typical hyperbole, Donald Trump hailed the agreement as a “great” and “comprehensive” deal and US markets welcomed signs that the most punishing tariffs may be avoided. But investors in UK equities appeared to be less enthusiastic as the hastily arranged agreement leaves a lot unresolved.

While the West has used the dollar to punish and persuade in the past, China has been quietly laying the groundwork for a world where the dollar is no longer needed by them.

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.