How the US has weaponised the dollar using its armoury of sanctions

The US exerts unprecedented control over global economic activity

Convinced of an existential threat from competitors, America is weaponizing the dollar to preserve its global economic and geopolitical position.

While the US accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s economic output, more than half of all global currency reserves and trade is in dollars. This is the result of the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, the effect of which was enhanced when the link between the dollar and gold ended in the 1971 Nixon shock, allowing America to control the supply of the currency.

The dollar’s pivotal role — an “exorbitant privilege,” in the term coined by then French Finance