The suddenly unstoppable U.S. dollar is posing a triple threat to American companies’ profits: driving up the costs of doing business overseas, suppressing the value of non-U.S. sales and, perhaps most worryingly, signaling weak international demand.
The dollar has been on a tear, with an index tracking it against six other major currencies notching roughly an 8 percent gain since the end of June. Few analysts see its breakout performance stalling out anytime soon since the U.S. economy stands on much firmer footing than most others around the world, Europe’s in particular. For companies in the benchmark S&P 500, that’s a big headwind because so many are multinationals, and as a group they derive almost half of their revenue from international markets.