Comment by eru

The exchange rate is a nominal phenomenon. Inflation adjusted interest rates and inflation adjusted asset values are a real phenomenon. They don't necessarily have much to do with each other.

Germany and Singapore are two prominent historic examples of countries that export just fine despite a strong currency.

Weakening your domestic currency has barely any impact on the real price of traded goods and commodities: they just price at the world market rate. The impact is felt for goods with sticky prices, chiefly labour. Weakening your currency is mostly a way to try and give everyone a wage cut. That can make your exports more competitive for a while. But it's not the only way to cut workers' wages. (And in general, later you seem to agree that giving ordinary people more real income is kind of the point of economics. So giving everyone a real wage cut seems a bit of a curious way to get there.)

> we are already seeing yields rise despite a dollar that is still strong enough to crush exports.

Rising yields fairly mechanically leads to a stronger dollar.

Btw, you might like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lerner_symmetry_theorem

The Lerner Symmetry Theorem suggests roughly that import tariffs are equivalent to export taxes; and export subsidies are equivalent to import subsidies.

And the US is actually doing pretty well in exports, if you take into account that they are exporting not just goods but also services; and if you squint a bit, you can also see that Americans love to found new start-ups and new world beating companies and sell shares in them to the world. That's also a kind of export, but it shows up on the other side of the ledger for accounting reasons.

Similarly, if you build an office building in Seattle and sell it to a foreigner, that also doesn't show up as an export for accounting reasons.