It's a fight between two forces. The US economy is still outperforming everybody else. The market is pricing in rate cuts that might get rates down to neutral, but nothing more than that. The other side is the will of the president and the Treasury Secretary to have a weaker currency because they believe that will help them rebalance global trade.

He doesn't get to decide on his own. I don't think that'll stop the first rate cut. But if we were to see tariff-induced inflation coming through, import prices rising as inventories of pre-tariff stocks run out, it gets difficult. If we continue to see GDP growth strong regardless of the labor market, it gets more difficult. It's okay for now and one rate cut fine, I think it gets tougher after.

The ECB is not comfortable with the strength of the euro because in real effective terms it's got very strong, partly because it's got so much stronger against the Chinese yuan. They're getting downside surprises on the inflation data but some upside surprises in growth particularly in Germany. They're kind of okay in their mindset, but they don't want the currency to go higher, and they might start saying something about it quite soon.

We'll have clarity on the politics after the weekend but we won't have clarity on policy. Markets are worried that if you tried to go for the original Abenomics plan again, it could backfire. Restoring confidence in debt sustainability in Japan is probably the most important thing for turning the currency around. I don't know how you do it quickly. It's likely to be quite bumpy.

I think the first half of the year is where things are difficult. It's this conflict between geopolitics and economics. That needs to settle itself down so we understand what we're doing; we're just reacting to headline after headline at the moment. Then we can get back to the economy and that's more tricky still.