Finance

Little spoken about in serious financial mags (maybe they’re scared what it means) but what Trump is doing is basically retreat from the USD being global reserve currency. Nobody stores USD because that doesn’t make money, the easiest way to do that is with Treasuries. They’re accessible, liquid, and backed by the issuer of the de facto global trading currency. They also allow US to borrow with no limit realistically.

Right now US is taking on massive amounts of debt and imports while exporting their currency to provide stability in the global trade. That role was filled by The British Empire before, it’s a known mechanism. For the neoliberal democracies that worked out fine but it didn’t work for the working class or the global south because the way US wielded this power was rather irresponsible if not malicious. Changing USD status in the global economy might be beneficial to the Americans in the long run but it has to be done in a more coordinated manner across multiple decades probably.

China sits on a ton of US Treasuries. Being the biggest foreign investor was their insurance against what US is doing. I have no idea how much this will explode but I have a suspicion Trump might be brought to submission by the sheer reality he has brought upon himself very soon - not from retaliatory tariffs but from general Treasury sell-off. Some say China will want to make CNY/RMB new global trading currency but that’s just a pipe dream. They have strong currency controls because their ultra rich would run the moment they could.