, Columnist
Currency Wars Are Easy to Start and Tough to Win
Global devaluations don’t happen in practice because everyone loses. Trump and his G-20 peers would do well to remember that.
This man doesn’t like to lose.
Photographer: Neil Hall/EPAThis article is for subscribers only.
To President Donald Trump, and any other Group of 20 chief thinking about waging a currency war: It’s basically impossible to win.
That's partly because they don't really happen in practice. If they did, everybody would lose because everyone would play. The surest way to affect the relative value of an exchange rate is through nudging interest rates up or down. These days, monetary policy among most major economies is so aligned that any one country would be hard-pressed to notch any kind of victory for very long.