Economics
Aug 21, 2026
Harold James
The puzzle of why the Trump administration is so concerned with a falling yen has historical parallels not to the 1930s or the 1980s, but to the 1960s, when US officials feared that a crisis elsewhere could spread to America. With US bond yields spiking, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is getting desperate.
PRINCETON—In a Reuters photo from late July, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent can be seen holding a to-do list with just one item: purchase $5–10 billion worth of yen. As he explained soon thereafter, invoking the famous phrase that then-European Central Bank President Mario Draghi used to save the euro in 2012, the Trump administration will do “whatever it takes” to prop up the Japanese currency.
