Dollar at a 3-Year Low: 3 Exporters Quietly Printing Money

Key Points

• A weaker U.S. dollar is creating pricing advantages for exporters like Caterpillar and Deere.
• Nucor benefits as falling dollar strength makes imported steel less competitive in the U.S. market.
• Infrastructure spending, reshoring, and data center construction add long-term growth catalysts beyond currency trends.

The U.S. dollar index (DXY) is down about 10% since it reached $109.64 in early January 2025. As of May 6, the greenback is trading at a level that investors haven’t seen since 2022. It’s important for investors to answer two questions. Why is it happening and how can they profit from this move?

The first question is simple, but nuanced. However, knowing the why makes the question of how to profit simple to answer.

Why Is the Dollar Falling?

A key reason for the dollar’s decline is the Trump administration’s focus on restructuring the global trade system. The idea is that the U.S. dollar has been overvalued for decades, leading to chronic trade deficits and the erosion of U.S. manufacturing to countries like China.

Supporting that thinking, the U.S. goods trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion in 2024. That was 175% larger than in 2000.

That’s a structural reason for the dollar’s slide. But there are other reasons. First, the Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates at the end of 2024. This has reduced the attractiveness of U.S. debt.

Second, resilient global growth has dampened demand for dollar assets as a safe haven. Here’s how that works. Foreign central banks and institutional investors have been selling U.S. Treasury bonds (dollar-denominated assets) to raise capital to deploy in their own markets.

When foreign holders sell Treasuries, they receive dollars—and when they convert those dollars back into their home currencies to invest locally, it puts downward pressure on the dollar and upward pressure on their own currency.

Analysts anticipate the next few years will see a secular bear market for the dollar, driven by investors diversifying away from dollar-denominated securities and by central banks reducing their Treasury holdings.

Let These 2 Blue-Chip Stocks Do the Heavy Lifting

One area that investors could consider building a position to benefit from this dynamic is heavy machinery and industrials. Both of these markets are getting a lift in the United States due to the onshoring of manufacturing, the data center buildout, and the need to rebuild national infrastructure.

The United States also exports over $57 billion in machinery each year. Companies in this space are already seeing benefits.

Take Caterpillar Inc. NYSE: CAT for example. Nearly half of the company’s revenue comes from outside North America. That makes the benefit of a weaker dollar self-explanatory. 

Pricing equipment in a company’s local currency becomes meaningfully cheaper without Caterpillar having to sacrifice margins.

And as the company’s Q1 2026 earnings report made clear, the long-term bull case is also rooted in the United States. Caterpillar is seeing heavy demand for its heavy equipment to build out data centers, and to modernize the nation’s infrastructure.

Deere & Company NYSE: DE is in a similar position. The company generates about 40% of its revenue outside the United States. It has a particularly strong presence in Latin America, which accounts for over $5.5 billion in annual sales.

The dollar tailwind is also helping Deere navigate a cyclical downturn that began in its 2024 fiscal year. DE has already absorbed most of that bad news, and the company is likely to see additional benefits as precision agriculture technology, Deere's biggest long-term bet, continues to attract buyers regardless of where the dollar trades.

This Steel Stock Stands Out

Nucor Corporation NYSE: NUE tells a different but complementary story. As the largest steel producer in the United States, Nucor doesn't generate the overseas revenue that Caterpillar and Deere do. Its advantage from a weaker dollar is more indirect.

Steel is a globally traded commodity priced in dollars. When the dollar falls, U.S.-produced steel becomes cheaper for foreign buyers and more competitive against imports on the domestic market.

Foreign steel arriving in American ports, often from cheaper producers in Asia and Europe, becomes relatively more expensive in dollar terms. That gives Nucor a pricing cushion that doesn't require it to cut costs or chase volume.

What makes Nucor particularly attractive here is its efficiency story.

The company uses electric arc furnaces powered by recycled scrap steel—a process that is far cheaper and more flexible than the traditional blast furnace model used by most global competitors.

The longer-term demand picture is also building quietly. Data centers require enormous amounts of structural steel. So does grid expansion, bridge replacement, and the kind of industrial reshoring the current administration is actively trying to accelerate. Nucor is already one of the primary domestic suppliers of rebar—the reinforcing steel that goes into essentially every large construction project in America,

Could the Dollar Reverse Course?

There’s a belief by some economists that the flight away from U.S. Treasuries will create demand for the dollar. For example, according to J.P. Morgan, each 1-percentage-point decline in foreign holdings relative to GDP, which equates to roughly $300 billion in Treasuries, would push yields higher by more than 33 basis points. That means if and when these same countries need to rebuild dollar reserves or re-enter U.S. assets, the buying pressure could be significant.

If that’s the case, the currency tailwind for these stocks could reverse. However, each name has a bull case beyond the dollar that makes them attractive choices to hold in a long-term portfolio.