As a professional journalist dedicated to objectivity and detachment, I am totally uncalm about the US president.
But you would be too if he had burned a big hole in your wallet. Since Donald Trump returned to power, the US dollar has dropped more than 10 per cent against the dollar index consisting of six major currencies, reportedly the worst fall since the oil shock of 1973.
As you may have guessed, I am paid by my employer in Hong Kong dollars. So thanks to the US dollar peg, I had just had to exchange HK$5.8-plus for one Canadian dollar, instead of the roughly average HK$5.4 until recently. On a monthly basis, the difference is roughly equivalent to, for my wife and me, 6 to 7 visits to our favourite grocery store where the real inflation rate for some items, I suspect, is 10 times the headline Canadian rate of under 2 per cent.
Every time Trump attacks or insults US Fed chair Jerome Powell, I weep. Posting on his own Truth Social platform, he has just openly called on Powell to resign: “‘Too Late’ should resign immediately!!!”
The president has called him “Mr Too Late”, “a numbskull”, “an average mentally person…Low IQ for what he does”. It’s been a long list of insults. Poor Jerome.
Financial historians may correct me but probably no previous Fed chair had to endure such prolonged public humiliation.
Since Trump’s avowed goal for his almost universal tariff war is to promote Made-in-America exports, he obviously wants a weak dollar. So there is a method in the madness in attacking Powell; and Trump seems personally to enjoy it. But there is no reason to doubt that he wants Powell out and replace him with what he calls “a low rates guy”, a complete sycophant just like he has with those put in charge of public health, education, defence, national security and intelligence, and much else. Powell’s term ends next May.