美元为何飙升：四大因素解析

For most of the past year or so, the US dollar has been going through a rough time. Having surged in the run-up to Trump's second term, in large part because markets thought tariffs would hurt the US less than everyone else. The dollar then crashed pretty hard in his first few months once markets realized his tariff policy was going to be more well, let's say, unorthodox than expected. However, after some languishing in the past couple of weeks, the dollar has staged a remarkable recovery, and it's now the strongest it's been in at least a year.

So, in this video, we thought we'd do our best to try and figure out why this is happening and explain why it's not necessarily a good sign. This map shows all of the places that Trump has launched military offensives since returning to the White House last year. But how did we reach this point? In the latest issue of our magazine, we run through a timeline of Trump's military chaos across the world. That's just some of the 80 pages in the magazine, because there's more to too long than you'd expect.

Purchase your copy by clicking the link in the description. Now, the best way to measure the strength or weakness of the US dollar is to look at the so-called dollar index, which basically compares the strength of the dollar against a weighted basket of other major currencies. The dollar index is generally considered a better way of gauging the dollar's strength than just comparing it to a single other currency because onetoone comparisons tell you as much about what's happening to the other currency as they do the dollar.

If the dollar weakens against the euro, for instance, it could just be that the euro is having a good day rather than the dollar actually struggling. Conversely, if the dollar falls against a whole load of other currencies, that's pretty solid proof that it's actually getting weaker. Anyway, according to this index, the dollar has basically been trending upwards since late January and is now the strongest it's been since April 2025 when the dollar was in freef fall after the madness of Liberation Day.

So, what's going on here? Well, there are at least four factors. The first and simplest is that the US economy looks in better health than it did a few months ago. This is in part because the war in Iran looks like it's ending and because of persistent AI related optimism in the markets, but it's also because more concretely, the official data has looked surprisingly all right recently. While headline inflation came in pretty hot last month, core inflation, which strips out energy costs and is the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, actually came in slightly below forecast.

Similarly, job creation has come in surprisingly strong in the past 3 months, and US corporates have been posting record profits. This becomes very apparent when you look at the so-called surprise index, which basically tracks the difference between official economic data and forecasts. When it's positive, it