Wealth & Money Quote by Robert C. Solomon

A line like this wears the costume of a neutral economic fact, but its real work is rhetorical: it smuggles a political argument in under the guise of inevitability. If the dollar depreciates, imported goods priced in foreign currencies generally become more expensive for U.S. buyers. Clean, almost mechanical. That cleanliness is the point. It invites the listener to stop at the first-order effect (prices rise) and skip the messy distributional question of who actually feels that rise, when, and how much.

Solomon, better known as a philosopher and educator than as a currency-market oracle, is likely using the sentence pedagogically: a compact cause-and-effect meant to discipline fuzzy thinking about trade, inflation, and “the value of money.” Its intent is clarifying. Its subtext is cautionary. The phrasing doesn’t say “might” or “often”; it declares “would,” turning a tendency into a certainty. That choice matters because it frames depreciation as a problem to be managed rather than a tradeoff to be weighed.

Contextually, this kind of statement typically appears where public debate gets sloppy: during periods of dollar weakness, anxiety about globalization, or arguments over tariffs and “buy American” policies. It doubles as a subtle rebuke to magical thinking - the idea that a country can devalue its way to competitiveness without paying a consumer-side bill.

Still, the sentence’s bluntness also hides second-order realities: importers hedge, firms absorb costs, substitution happens, and domestic producers can raise prices too. The quote works because it’s simple enough to teach, sharp enough to scare, and tidy enough to recruit for whatever policy someone already wants.