Newsweek, July 2025
The U.S. dollar is tumbling as President Donald Trump‘s economic agenda—at the executive and legislative level—takes full shape. Economists told Newsweek this could advance Trump’s goal of promoting American goods in foreign markets and strengthening exports, but warn that a weakened dollar comes with significant downsides, including the jeopardization of its status as the world’s reserve currency. The U.S. Dollar Index—which tracks its value relative to a basket of major foreign currencies—has declined by more than 10 percent over the past six months. This marks the steepest first-half slump, and the worst beginning for a presidential term, since its creation in 1973.
Achieving this milestone comes amid a period of flux for the U.S. economy. On Friday, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which had been narrowly passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives the day before. The sweeping budget reconciliation package contains new spending measures and an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which, together, budget watchdogs believe could inflate the nation’s already-sizable national deficit.
