White House denies secret deal to weaken dollar, defends strong greenback

The White House is pushing back hard on speculation that it’s working behind closed doors to drive down the dollar.

Stephen Miran, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, made that clear during an interview on Bloomberg’s Big Take DC podcast.

“We’re not secretly at work on any of this stuff. There’s nothing there,” Miran said when asked if the Trump administration was trying to organize an international agreement to weaken the US currency. He also stressed that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the one who officially speaks on the government’s currency stance.

According to Bloomberg, the recent chaos in foreign exchange markets, especially after President Donald Trump put his planned tariffs on hold, had traders thinking something else might be happening. 

Currency chatter shakes up markets across Asia

Trump paused his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on April 9 to leave room for negotiations, and almost immediately, currencies in Asia began surging. Taiwan’s dollar jumped close to 10%, the highest move since 1988. South Korea’s won climbed by 6.4%. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index has fallen more than 6% since Trump returned to the White House.

Stephen said nothing has changed in the administration’s currency approach, even if traders are reading into the market moves. He confirmed that he hasn’t been part of the trade talks directly, but still dismissed the idea of any coordinated effort to drag the dollar lower. “The United States continues to have the strong dollar policy,” Stephen said.

Scott, who took over the Treasury not long ago, had previously floated the idea of a similar agreement before stepping into his current role. But now, he’s sticking to a consistent message. He supports the long-standing view that the dollar should stay strong and that exchange rates should be set by the market, not by policy games.

On the sidelines of a G-7 meeting in Banff, Canada, Scott met with Japan’s Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato. Afterward, the US Treasury said both men “reaffirmed their shared belief that exchange rates should be market determined and that, at present, the dollar-yen exchange rate reflects fundamentals.”

That was an effort to calm markets, but it didn’t stop the South Korean won from hitting a seven-month high later that day. Local news had reported that currency direction was mentioned during trade talks between the US and South Korea.

Miran distances White House from market rumors

Stephen used the podcast to remind people that his paper was just a thought experiment—not a plan. “Markets are taking it more seriously than the administration is,” he said. But traders are still connecting the dots. That’s partly because of how the old currency deals came together—quietly, without announcements—making it hard for investors to trust public denials.

Still, Stephen said that’s not how things work under Trump. “This is the most transparent administration in history,” he claimed. “Almost every single day the president hosts a press conference. He tells you exactly what he’s thinking, exactly what he wants to accomplish, exactly what he’s going to do, and one by one he does what he says he’s going to do.”

Even so, things haven’t always been perfectly consistent. Just last month, Stephen gave a speech where he called the dollar’s dominant role in global finance a “burden.” He said that status hurts American workers and businesses by making labor and exports too expensive internationally.

But now he’s backtracking a bit. On the podcast, he insisted that the dollar’s global position brings major upsides. “A strong dollar is good for America. That’s not just merely a statement about levels—it’s a statement about the strength of the dollar system and dollar dominance. That gives us many other benefits.”

What’s not clear is how long those “benefits” will last. Markets have already started reacting. After Trump announced his April 2 tariff strategy, US assets tanked. Stocks, Treasuries, and the dollar all got hit in what analysts called a “sell America” moment. Stephen said he wasn’t shocked.

“I wasn’t surprised by the volatility,” he said. In his view, the swings in the market were simply a reaction to the bigger changes Trump is trying to make. But he also added one final note: that turbulence won’t last forever. “That volatility doesn’t last forever,” he said.

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