The daily business briefing: April 13, 2017

Trump comments drag down the dollar, Trump reverses course on several key economic policies, and more

Donald Trump gets friendly with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago
(Image credit: Getty Images)

1. Dollar drops after Trump says it's 'getting too strong'

The dollar dropped on Wednesday after President Trump told The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. currency was "getting too strong," saying that "it's very, very hard to compete when you have a strong dollar and other countries are devaluing their currency." Trump also said the U.S. would not label China as a currency manipulator in an upcoming report, saying China had not done so in months, and he didn't want to torpedo his push to get China to help rein in North Korea. Trump said he was partly to blame for pushing the greenback too high, "because people have confidence in me." The dollar index, which tracks the dollar against a basket of other currencies, fell by 0.6 percent and the benchmark 10-year Treasury fell to a five-month low. U.S. stock futures pointed to a slightly lower open on Thursday, too.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.