Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said Friday that recent market trends show investors are moving away from the U.S. as the safest place to invest while President Donald Trump’s trade war escalates.
With Treasury yields rising and the U.S. dollar sagging against its global counterparts in recent days, the trends are running counter to what you might normally see, the central bank official said during a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview.
“Normally, when you see big tariff increases, I would have expected the dollar to go up. The fact that the dollar is going down at the same time, I think, lends some more credibility to the story of investor preferences shifting,” Kashkari said.
The 10-year Treasury yield has surged this week after Trump announced his intention to slap a 10% across-the-board tariff against U.S. trading partners and threatened to impose even harsher select levies before backing down Wednesday.
At the same time, the greenback has slumped more than 3% against a basket of global currencies, with moves potentially signifying a turn away from safe-haven U.S. assets.
“Investors around the world have viewed America as the best place to invest, and if that’s true, we will have a trade deficit. So now one of the ways that expresses itself is in lower yields across asset classes in America,” Kashkari said. “If the trade deficit is going to go down, it could be that investors are saying, OK, America no longer is the most attractive place in the world to invest, and then you would expect to see bond yields go up.”
Kashkari noted, however, that he is seeing “stresses” but not significant dislocations in market functioning.
Kashkari does not vote this year on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee but will vote in 2026. He noted that his focus in the current environment is on keeping inflation expectations anchored, echoing other policymakers’ statements that rates are unlikely to move until there is clearer visibility on fiscal and trade policy.
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