Bloomberg: Backlash against weaponized dollar is growing across the World

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All around the world, a backlash is brewing against the hegemony of the US dollar, Bloomberg comments.

Brazil and China recently struck a deal to settle trade in their local currencies, seeking to bypass the greenback in the process. India and Malaysia in April signed an accord to ramp up usage of the rupee in cross-border business. Even perennial US ally France is starting to complete transactions in yuan.

Currency experts are leery of sounding like the Cassandras who have, embarrassingly, predicted the dollar's imminent demise on any number of occasions over the past century. And yet in observing this sudden wave of agreements aimed at sidestepping the dollar, they detect the sort of meaningful action, however small and gradual, that was typically missing in the past.

For many global leaders, their rationales for taking these measures are strikingly similar. The greenback, they say, is being weaponized, used to push America's foreign-policy priorities — and punish those that oppose them.

The Biden administration has imposed sanctions, frozen hundreds of billions of dollars of Moscow's foreign reserves, and, in concert with Western allies, all but ousted the country from the global banking system. For much of the world, it's been a stark reminder of their own dependency on the dollar, regardless of what they think of the war.

And that's the dilemma Washington officials face: By increasingly relying on the greenback to fight their geopolitical battles, not only do they risk denting the dollar's preeminent place in world markets, but they could ultimately undermine their ability to exert influence on the global stage. To ensure long-term efficacy, sanctions are often better left as a threat and not actually carried out, according to Daniel McDowell, author of "Bucking the Buck: US Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash Against the Dollar".

Undoubtedly, part of the shift away from the dollar is being orchestrated by China. President Xi Jinping is seeking to carve out a bigger role for the yuan in the global financial system, and his government has made expanding the currency's use abroad a priority.

Yet much of the push is happening without Beijing's involvement.

India and Malaysia in April announced a new mechanism to conduct bilateral trade in rupees. It's part of a broader effort by the Narendra Modi administration — which hasn't signed on to the US-led sanctions campaign against Russia — to bypass the dollar for at least some international transactions.

A month later, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed to boost the use of member currencies for regional trade and investment.

And South Korea and Indonesia just weeks ago signed an accord to promote direct exchanges of the won and rupiah.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva lashed out at the dollar's dominance while visiting Shanghai in April. Standing at a podium surrounded by the flags of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS nations, he called on the world's largest developing economies to come up with an alternative to replace the greenback in foreign trade, asking "who decided that the dollar was the (trade) currency after the end of gold parity?"

He was harkening back to the early 1970s, when the post-WWII accord — known as Bretton Woods — that had made the dollar the center of global finance was unraveling. The agreement's collapse did little to blunt the dollar's preeminent position. To this day, it serves as the world's dominant reserve currency, which has juiced demand for US bonds and allowed the country to run massive trade and budget deficits

The currency's centrality to the global payments system also allows America to wield unique influence over the economic destiny of other nations.

About 88% of all global foreign-exchange transactions, even those not involving the US or US companies, are in dollars, according to the most recent data from the Bank for International Settlements. Because banks handling cross-border dollar flows maintain accounts at the Federal Reserve, they’re susceptible to US sanctions.

"Countries have chafed for decades under US dollar dominance," said Jonathan Wood, principal for global issues at consultancy Control Risks. "More aggressive and expansive use of US sanctions in recent years reinforces this discomfort – and coincides with demands by major emerging markets for a new distribution of global power."

A representative for the Treasury referred Bloomberg to comments Secretary Janet Yellen made in a mid-April interview with CNN, in which she acknowledged that "there is risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar."

Still, the drumbeat of de-dollarization is continuing unabated in the developing world.

Pakistan is looking to pay for Russian crude imports in yuan, the country's power minister said last month, while earlier this year the United Arab Emirates said it was in early-stage discussions with India on ways to boost non-oil commerce in rupees.

The BRICS nations asked the bloc's specially created bank to provide guidance on a how a potential new shared currency might work, including how it could shield member countries from the impact of sanctions such as those imposed on Russia.

"Without a doubt, de-dollarization is accelerating and will continue for years to come," said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in Singapore. "The US made a calculated decision to use the dollar to inflict pain, and there's likely to be long-term consequences."

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The World Bank has approved an additional credit of $100 million in IDA financing to support Rwanda in increasing access to finance and supporting businesses’ recovery and resilience in the post-pandemic period.

The additional finance will scale up investments under the Access to Finance for Recovery and Resilience project by providing financial relief, risk-sharing instruments, and long-term sources of funding to businesses.

The additional financing will support an innovative Sustainability-Linked Bond instrument to be issued by the Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD) in local currency – a first for a World Bank operation, facilitating the mobilization of private capital in an IDA country.

This type of transaction is also a first for a development bank globally and provides a model that could be scaled up in Rwanda and elsewhere in the region.

The bond issuance will be part of a programmatic SLB issuance program to support the Development Bank of Rwanda's institutional strengthening through diversifying its funding sources via capital markets while nourishing its role and commitments to achieving Key Performance Indicators aligned with Rwanda's sustainable economic development.

"The additional financing will further expand the project's pool of innovative blended finance which had already brought together World Bank financing with funding from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and a grant from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery," said Rolande Pryce, World Bank Country Manager for Rwanda.

"This innovative operation goes a step beyond by enabling private capital mobilization, representing yet another great example of the fruitful collaboration with the Government of Rwanda to build solid foundations for Rwanda's socioeconomic transformation."

The BRD Sustainability Linked Bond program is expected to align closely with BRD's broader strategic objectives of promoting sustainable economic development.

The program will rely on a sound sustainability-linked financing framework, including specific measurable Key Performance Indicators, which will enable the program to receive the ‘sustainability-linked’ label.

The identified indicators will be relevant, core, and material in relation to BRD's activities and the Government of Rwanda's sustainable development objectives; measurable; externally verifiable; and bench-markable.

With this operation, the Government of Rwanda will play an enabling role in BRD's foray into long-term institutional sustainability and sustainability-linked financing.

The issuance is expected to act as an important signal for the wider use of debt markets, promote this form of financing among other potential issuers, contribute to domestic capital market development, and position Rwanda as a leader in sustainable finance regionally.

The proposed transaction is also expected to position Rwanda favorably internationally and support broader private-sector capital flows to strategic sectors. In addition, the proposed issuance could provide a template for broader sustainability development in the financial sector.

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Most business owners want to do everything they can to create a successful business. This can mean seeking qualified and high-performing employees and providing high-quality products and services for their customers.

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The average business owner might have the dedication and tenacity to start a new business, but it doesn't mean they have all the necessary skills to ensure their business succeeds. Fine-tune some of these skills above, and you might stand a better chance of enjoying business success.

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The inability of NATO-backed Ukraine to defeat the Kremlin's forces and the commercial and economic dependency that Western countries have fallen into vis-à-vis China confirm bitter apprehensions about a rapid decline of the US-led Western bloc, writes Côme Carpentier de Gourdon, a member of the Editorial Board of the World Affairs Journal.

The next BRICS summit scheduled in South Africa in August is likely to announce various momentous decisions, such as the admission of new member-states, including Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Argentina, and Egypt and set a timetable for the introduction of a new joint currency to replace the US Dollar in international trade between them.

The likelihood that this rival to the Greenback may come into being in the short or medium term has set alarm bells ringing in the financial citadels of the Western world and especially in the United States, already shaken by the parlous state of their economy and the declining status of a rapidly devaluing Dollar (in terms of purchasing power).

The economic threat posed by this future monetary vehicle combines with the challenge posed to American supremacy by Russia and China and incites Washington DC to use all its political, diplomatic, military and judicial arsenal in order to derail this process.

One cannot but view in that context Russian President Putin's inculpation by the International Criminal Court, by a Prosecutor who appears to have been highly susceptible to pressure. In line with this ‘pull all the stops’ strategy, the American government and its allies are now applying the greatest pressure on South Africa to arrest the Russian head of State if and when he comes to participate in the August BRICS summit. Clearly, the intent is to prevent the gathering from fulfilling its agenda by embroiling its members in a legal controversy about the primacy of international law over the diplomatic immunity of heads of state in foreign countries. The sabotage tactic can be effective if South Africa, the host state, faces damaging economic and diplomatic sanctions that might topple its fragile political edifice, given its ethnically divided society and an economy still under heavy ‘Western’ influence.

The South African spokesman has indeed recalled that, though foreign heads of state have diplomatic immunity, the latter does not supersede arrest warrants from a supra-national judicial authority although the ICC (to which Pretoria is a signatory) cannot compel a sovereign state to comply with its demands.

Similar pressure tactics and threats are being implemented by the G-7 Clan towards the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – both chaired by India this year – which the United States and its subalterns are holding hostage to the Ukrainian question. There is a realisation in Western circles that Ukraine cannot win this war on the battlefield so that only a major geopolitical upset can turn the table on Russia. Humanitarian and other moral concerns are mere fig leaves over the naked resolve to maintain hegemony through the ‘rules-based order’ system.

It is enough to recall that a rapidly growing percentage of the world's population is now under some kind of sanctions, most unilaterally decreed by the United States with the support of its allies, to realise that mankind is split between the Club of the sanctioning powers and the rest of the world, which can fall victims to these sanctions at the will of the US Congress and the White House. India has had that experience in the last decades and faces it once again, in connection to its energy trade with Russia

India is being courted by the US while being harshly criticized in the globalist ‘legacy media’ on various grounds but in reality for professing constructive multi-alignment.

The recent offer from the US Congress of NATO-Plus status to New Delhi is predicated on India's acceptance of the broader US agenda, against a promise of technology transfer and business incentives but it will necessarily entail the loss of strategic autonomy and independent decision-making. It should be kept in mind that any country or personality, legal or physical, can always fall under the sway of US sanctions if it ceases to comply with the prescribed ‘rules-based code of behaviour’, all the more so if it contributes to any initiative regarded as an existential threat to the Superpower's status.

And the BRICS, at last potentially, matches that one-sided, self-serving definition of what goes against the global order.

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