Threatening the nations that are breaking away from Clown World’s financial control with more of what they seek is highly unlikely to prove successful:
Economic aides to former US President Donald Trump are looking for options to stop countries from shifting away from the US dollar as it faces a growing challenge from emerging markets, including BRICS nations, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The presumptive Republican nominee for the November presidential election and his team are discussing penalties against both allies and adversaries who seek to divert their trade from the greenback to other currencies. The options could include export controls, currency manipulation charges, and tariffs, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The global trend toward using national currencies in trade instead of the dollar gained significant momentum after Russia was cut off from the Western financial system and had its foreign reserves frozen in 2022, as part of Ukraine-related sanctions. A bill with provisions authorizing the US to confiscate frozen Russian assets, which Biden signed on Wednesday, could further spur de-dollarization, financial experts have warned. The so-called REPO Act, which was incorporated in the $61 billion military aid package for Kiev, authorized the US president to seize Russian state assets held in American banks.
As quoted by Bloomberg, Trump warned on Thursday that with US President Joe Biden, “you’re going to lose the dollar as the standard. That’ll be like losing the biggest war we’ve ever lost.”
Any such action would so reliably produce the exact opposite of the consequences it purports to seek that it makes one strongly suspect Trump is working with the BRICSIA strategists to bring down Clown World. Imposing export controls, currency manipulation chargers, and tariffs on nations already actively avoiding use of the dollar is only going to exacerbate the speed at which they reduce their economic interactions with the international dollar economy.
Which, given the West’s reliance on Saudi oil, Chinese manufacturing, and Russian natural resources, will tend to also speed up the decline and fall of Clown World.