Stopping de-dollarization has become one of the priorities of President Donald Trump. He believes that he has found the perfect formula to stop countries from walking away from one of the largest weapons of the U.S.’s economic arsenal: the ‘mighty’ dollar, as the president has referred to the greenback before.
Last week, Trump stated that due to his hard-edge policies regarding de-dollarization, third countries would have second thoughts about conducting business away from the dollar. On Thursday, he told journalists that the idea of undermining the U.S. dollar was gone, warning about the consequences of such an action.
Trump warned yet again about the application of tariffs to nations wanting to “play games with the dollar,” referring to the BRICS bloc directly. He asseverated that tariffs up to 100% would be applied to these countries if they made a move against the dollar.
This is not the first time that Trump threatened other nations, and the BRICS bloc specifically, with the application of tariffs, which have been the preferred tool for his administration to expedite their objectives.
Back in November, Trump outright stated that 100% tariffs would be hitting countries with de-dollarization agendas and that they “should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. economy.”
Nonetheless, this has been qualified as a moot point by some economists, who explained the BRICS bloc was currently not involved in creating a new currency. Economist Jim Rickard stated Trump’s remarks were a “shot across the bow,” and that gold was the closest that BRICS had to a new currency.
Internally, it seems that the BRICS bloc remains unfazed by Trump’s threats toward its de-dollarization plans. Russia and China, two of the largest trading members of the bloc, have been increasing their usage of national currencies in trading. At the same time, Iran has declared that it would back up the plans for a BRICS currency, if consensus is reached for its implementation.
Source:news.bitcoin.com
