Trump’s tweets spark fear of ‘currency war’

The dollar slid against the euro and pound yesterday as US President Donald Trump adopted an aggressive posture on trade and foreign exchange, stoking talk of a currency war in addition to a trade war.

In an interview with CNBC television broadcast Friday, Trump bluntly threatened to slap all Chinese imported goods with tariffs, saying the US has been “ripped off by China for a long time.”

Later in a pair of tweets, Trump attacked China and the European Union for keeping their currencies low to gain a trade advantage, while again blasting the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates.

That came after CNBC on Thursday aired portions of a Trump interview in which he criticized the Federal Reserve’s current course of interest rate hikes.