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.

After resuming their slide at the start of the week, global equity markets jumped on news that the highest tariffs would be delayed by 90 days. Did Donald Trump blink in the face of market turmoil, or does he think the threat of higher tariffs has done its job by forcing countries to the negotiating table?