The Plaza Accord is studied as a success because the dollar fell and the U.S. trade deficit eventually narrowed. That framing captures the target but misses the distribution of costs. The United States exported its adjustment. The dollar fell, but American savings rates and consumption patterns did not change. Japan absorbed the correction through an asset inflation cycle that later unwound catastrophically. Germany and France benefited comparatively — their exports became more competitive without the same domestic asset inflation. Coordinated interventions can move prices. They cannot change the underlying incentives that produced the imbalance. The imbalance shifts form rather than resolves. Today the dollar is again at the center of international tension. The DXY has traded above 100 for much of the last three years. U.S. deficits remain structural. Tariffs and currency policy are being debated in terms that echo 1985. The historical record does not say coordination fails. It says coordination succeeds at the stated target while producing secondary effects that emerge years later, often in a different country. In 1985, Japan paid the cost of America's adjustment. That cost arrived on schedule, a few years delayed and several thousand Nikkei points higher.