JOHN BERMAN (CO-HOST): The question this morning; who is President Trump? Is he the same guy with the same positions that he was last week, let alone last year? Besides foreign policy changes, he just made three stunning flip-flops when it comes to economic policies.
[...]
POPPY HARLOW (CO-HOST): But now the president is making a number of breathtaking reversals. Now, he says China is not manipulating its currency. Fed chair Janet Yellen, quote, “I like her. I respect her.” He's willing to keep her. And that so-called Export-Import Bank that he mocked last year, and has been called “crony capitalism” by some conservatives, now Trump says it helps a lot of small companies and it's a very good thing. Let's make sense of this, or try to, this morning with CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans, and Stephen Moore, CNN senior economics analysts. He is also a former senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign. So, Stephen Moore, you acknowledge these are breathtaking reversals, I assume. Are you worried? Are you personally worried that the president is abandoning some really core things about his -- I mean his entire run?
[...]
HARLOW: Christine Romans, to you. Okay, so there are real impacts to what the president said. So, what happens to the dollar yesterday? We see the U.S. dollar slump, we see Treasury bond yields fall. This is after he said he basically doesn't want so strong of a dollar, which is fascinating because a strong dollar is a good thing for him, it mirrors well on him, it makes him look like a strong president. What's going on?
CHRISTINE ROMANS: It's an indicator of strength in the American economy, in the American outlook, and he said the dollar is too strong right now. And he took credit for it being too strong, as the president often does, and then it immediately fell. He's saying it's too strong because it hurts American manufacturers who are exporting their goods overseas when the dollar is too strong. What I'm -- and Stephen Moore has been around as long as I have on this -- presidents don't talk about the value of the dollar. Treasury secretaries don't talk about the value of the dollar. They say that their policies, and the things they do in the economy and in the structure of the American economy, are what move the value of the dollar. So that's very rare to see something like that. And, Stephen, you talked about the adaptability of this president, the learning -- growing into being presidential, changing his mind on some of his stances on China. There's also learning on the fly, and there are those in the market who are feeling that the president spends 10 minutes with President Xi and suddenly he abandons his tough talk completely over just 10 minutes because of the North Korea factor. And, what is being presidential and adaptable, and what is learning as you go?
