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On a Friday afternoon earlier this month, Bloomberg's Ruth caston was monitoring Asian markets and hoping for calm ahead of her weekend.
Truth to be told, I was hoping for a very quiet Friday because it was a public holiday here in Singapore Thursday. Baby boy, It definitely didn't end up that way.
For short, Ruth covers the foreign exchange market from Singapore, and on that particular Friday, an Asian currency that rarely makes headlines started to search.
The Taiwan dollar. At around eleven thirty local time in Taipei. It jumped by about two percent, but it didn't just stop there. By the time markets had closed, the Taiwan dollar was up about three percent higher against the US currency. To put things into perspective, it was the single largest one day advance since nineteen eighty eight. This is a normally incredibly sedate currency. Something had clearly blown up.
The blow up at market watches globally on high alert, and on Monday morning the surge continued. You're looking at the Taiwan dollar up against virtually everything, and up substantially against everything. Everything is done against a Taiwan don. I think it's one.
The Taiwan dollars move was so large that it was affecting, you know, peers in Asia. For instance, the Malaysian rinked rose more than one percent on Friday. On Monday again boom, we saw another one percent move, the South Korean one jumped more than two percent at one stage, and then we saw Hong Kong authorities ramp up sales at a local dollar because the green bag was just weakening. So it was a spiral effect and in a whirlpool, just everything being sucked in.
Eventually, the Taiwan dollars stabilized, but the spike underscored a much larger issue d dollarization, a movement away from US assets as markets grapple, which shifts in US economic policy, and Ruth stepping back. Why is it such a big deal that Taiwan's dollar surged to these unprecedented levels.
It was hugely disruptive on a lot of levels of the economy and also society. If you're a sophisticated investor, then you're caught out on the wrong side of the trade. You would have seen huge losses because this is a normally stable currency. On an economic level, a surge of this magnitude can really impact exporters, traders, insurers, And this is coming at a time when the US was imposing terrists right on most of the world and people are
to digest that. So there would have been also people across markets that will be thinking about the other side of the trade, which is a dollar. The green bag is on eighty eight percent of all trades in the world, so dominant that every single trade yield, every single currency exchange, eighty eight percent of that every minute involves the dollar, and people started thinking, are we wrong? Did we get the dollar wrong here? And if so, maybe I should just really sell it and sell it against.
What Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Rebecca Cheung Wilkins. Every week we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons, and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today, on the show, Asia's Dollar Unwind, are Asian nations rethinking their traditional approach of hoarding US dollars and what does this mean for the global economy As confidence in the
dollar faces increasing scrutiny. For decades, the US dollar has been the world's dominant currency. It's deeply embedded in government, central banks, life insurers, and even your investment and retirement funds. That's unlikely to change for the time being. But what we saw happen with Taiwan's currency earlier this month is extremely significant. It shows the degree to which investors are looking for viable alternatives to the dollar.
Unprompted, a hedge fund manager told me, this is a river's asiing flanantier crisis worth seeing right now.
Bloomberg's Ruth Carson says the spiral spark fears that Taiwan's dollar search wasn't a one off event.
What I found really profound was that soul searching people going, what if indeed this is the start of a domino effect and we see money instead of being sucked out of Asia, we see the opposite capital flows coming in because momentum right, And indeed we did see that in a way, Literally a week and a bit after the Taiwan dollar explosion, the South Korean one actually jumped two percent, another super sedate currency typically and the whole narrative just
gained a lot more traction that Hey, we are at that point where This is nineteen ninety seven in reverse twenty twenty five style.
In nineteen ninety seven, the Asian financial crisis began with the devaluation of Thailand's currency and quickly spread through the region.
There was an over reliance on short term borrowings at the time by countries like Thailand and South Korea and all that, but the short term borrowings were not backed by dollar assets, and that in turn really triggered a debt crisis. There were very heart lessons learned of we need to ensure that we have a treasure chest of really strong, high quality desired assets like treasuries like the dollar, and make sure we don't get to the nineteen ninety
seven repeat again. So that really led Asian nations to double down on earning dollars from exports to the US, building up surpluses that goes back to the treasure chest idea.
Since nineteen ninety seven, the eleven biggest economies in Asia have collectively bought four point seven trillion dollars of US equities and bonds, which they reinvested right back into America.
In the early two thousands, almost every dollar earned, for instance, by the large Asian exporters to America was reinvested back into its equities and bond markets, and Asian currencies have been as a result almost unvalued for decades.
That tram peaked into thousand and four and started tapering off as China's membership in the WTO reshaped investments in the region. The two thousand and eight financial crisis and last years carried trade crisis in Japan also spooked investors into rebalancing their portfolios. Then Trump started his second term.
So almost unanimously talking to people across markets. The message is that Donald Trump's trade war two point zero is only accelerating the process of de dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar and finding alternatives. That undisputedly is the theme across the seven point five trillion dollars a day currency market. It is definitely the theme driving this insatiable bid for gold,
for instance, and also for just healthy alternatives. I mean, even arguments like bitcoin, you know, are coming into the equation. What can people do to find other stores of value other than the US dollar. We're hearing people say that markets are at an inflection point. We're witnessing the birth pains of a new regime. Others are saying, this is just the beginning of the great unwind of US dollar hoarding and exceptionalism.
And how are we seeing investors in Asia reacting to this idea of reverse capital flow? And if it is coming back to Asia, where does the capital go?
Japan's largest life insure, for instance, nip On Life, they are actively looking for alternatives to treasuries. This is a big, you know, change in stance. The tide is turning after a multi decade trend. That Titanic is turning. And don't forget China, China, which is so critical. Data from treasury has shown that they've shrunk. The treasury is holding in March. The question then is you're right, where does the capital go. It's going to gold, it's going to Europe, It's going
to places like the Singapore dollar, Taiwan dollar. We've seen strength in Asian currency, so the drips and traps are coming home, but it does take time and people are still figuring out where that money will ultimately lead after the break.
What a reframing of global financial markets means for Asia's economies. The recent surge in Taiwan's dollar came as a shock to investors, but the move globally towards Taiwan's currency doesn't exist in a vacuum. Figures released in late April showed strong economic growth in Taiwan in the the first few months of twenty twenty five, and market watchers speculated that foreign exchange rates could be part of the ongoing trade negotiations between the US and major trade partners across Asia,
including Taiwan. What does a stronger Taiwan dollar mean for people in Taiwan? Who does it benefit? Who does it hurt?
So I think a good way to think about it would be to look at people in Taiwan and also outside Taiwan. It's good for people who are overseas and hoold Taiwan's assets like real estate shares, given that the value of their local assets of just can you imagine just search six percent and you didn't have to do anything at all just because of the currency move. But you know what, if you are an exporter, I mean it's painful. All of a sudden you have got a six percent hit.
Take Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest chip maker, as an example. It estimates that for every one percent appreciation in the Taiwan dollar, its operating margin declines by zero point four percent. Taiwan's life insurers, who are huge investors in US treasuries, also took a significant hit.
If you're a local life insurer who have overseas assets predominantly in the US, and you are unhitched or unprepared for such set of moves in a currency, it severely impacts the value of your investments in a very very short space of time. Gomman Sachs they put pen to paper and they did a calculation that a ten percent gain in the dollar and this would will This could
potentially also apply to other players in the market. But a ten percent gain and a Taiwan dollar could lead to eighteen billion dollars in unrealized currency loss for the insurers, and that would effectively wipe out their capital reserves.
Okay, so that's the impact on the day. But longer term is a stronger Taiwan dollar is it good for Taiwan?
So a stronger Taiwan dollar is great for local consumers in the sense that your imports become a lot cheaper. All of a sudden, Your imported cheese has just gotten a lot cheaper, they have more spending power as well, So if you think about it, you can go overseas, you can get a lot more bang for your buck. But if you're an exporter and this is entrenched, all of a sudden there is a regime shift and you are facing a stronger Taiwan dollar as your base case, you are going to be in a lot of pain.
Taiwan is a major exporter, and we all know strong currencies not great for your p and l.
Outside Taiwan, some of the world's biggest money managers are wary of how the unwinding of the US dollar could affect other Asian countries, especially those that have large trade surpluses with the US.
There are indicators out there suggesting that Asian currencies are indeed severely undervalued, which puts this risk really at the forefront of things. On average, for example, major Asian currencies, including the yen and yue, which are seen as two very anchor currencies and as part of the world, are fifty seven percent weaker than exchange rates that take into account differences in the cost of living. That's according to our calculations, and that's close to an all time historic
low of fifty nine percent. It was set in twenty twenty four.
And this is a controversial question with really only one answer. What is the currency in Asia that could be a dollar alternative and why is it so controversial as an alternative?
Yes, this is definitely something that is heavily debated across research desks. I'm sure. So I'm going to quote Netics's you know, there's a fantastic chief Asia Pacific economist over there who said that for this to be structural, you should know where to go and no gives the return that the dollar has been giving nobody. So the euro is the second most trader currency in the well, the
yen is the third, behind the dollar. But even though it is combined, it's hard to find a true alternative to the green back and the Treasury's market, which backs a lot of this right, and the US equity markets. But people are certainly thinking about it, and their thinking in many ways is enough to trigger some really big swings in markets. Now imagine if that gains traction.
But essentially, is this rewiring, this reframing of the global financial system and move away from US dollar dominance and move into emphasis on local currencies in Asia? Is this good or bad for Asia.
You know, I don't even know whether I have an encapsulating answer for that. What I think we can conclude is that definitely there will be a recalibration of markets. How it will land and ultimately end up, and who the winners and losers are is still to be determined. Because this is such a seismic shift, people are racing
to figure out. For instance, if we have a stronger Singapore dollar, a stronger Hong Kong dollar, a stronger yen, a stronger in a nation repair, how would that ultimately change everything from the psyche of the consumer through to the fabric of society and businesses as we know it today.
So all of a sudden, if you're going to have people really focusing on buying Asia as a whole, it could accelerate everything from tourism through to technology, through to education, through to medicine and rewire not just the market side of things, but whole economies. But I think people are seriously at the point where they're trying to gain plan what that could look.
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Rebecca Chung Wilkins. To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access to all of bloomberg dot Com. Subscribe today at bloomberg dot com slash podcast offer. If you like the episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take Asia Wherever you listen.
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