Jair de Souza: Why Trump threatens countries that abandon the dollar

Trump’s threats to countries that abandon the dollar

By Jair de Souza*

A few days ago, former United States President Donald Trump issued a severe threat to all countries that are moving forward in the debate regarding the withdrawal of the dollar as the standard currency for international trade transactions.

This is a subject that we have already addressed in the past, but due to its enormous importance and validity at the moment, I consider it opportune to return to the essence of what we had already tried to highlight previously.

One of the consequences resulting from the Bretton Woods Agreements, shortly before the conclusion of World War II and due to its predicted results, was the role acquired by the US dollar as an international transaction currency.

In this first phase, there was a stipulated convertibility between the dollar and gold.

In other words, any country in possession of a certain amount of dollars could demand its conversion to gold at any time.

However, in 1971, the US authorities decided to end the backing of their currency based on gold.

From then on, international trade began to operate around a means of payment entirely subordinated to the whims of the United States monetary authorities.

Supported by this mechanism, the American economy entered a phase of parasitism the likes of which the history of humanity had never seen.

Without the need to back its monetary issues with real gold reserves and with the dollar continuing to be an internationally accepted means of payment, the United States stopped worrying about the issue of its budget deficit.

Ultimately, any imbalance that might arise would end up being shared, or, in truth, transferred, with all the nations of the planet.

Thus, from the United States’ point of view, it would be enough for them to issue more dollars for the accounts to balance. And, without a doubt, in this regard, there were no obstacles.

It was this extremely powerful instrument of financial manipulation that endowed the United States with an incomparable ability to expand and strengthen its power across all corners of the Earth without depending on the real strength of its productive economy.

Thus, the enormous costs of installing military bases in the most remote geopolitically strategic points of our planet could be borne without major sacrifices of their own.

In other words, it was the whole world that had to pay for the United States to have the military power to impose itself on the whole world.

Currently, there are around 900 of their military bases, spread across all continents and ready to be activated the moment they feel that their interests may be at risk.

And, if any speck on Earth could have remained beyond the reach of this deadly machine, Javier Milei has already arranged with his guardians so that the American Southern Cone would be well covered.

Therefore, this gigantic (or rather, monstrous) military structure acts as the main support for American financial capital to continue to make enormous gains without having to lift a finger to do so.

And ensuring that the dollar remains the standard currency for international transactions may seem secondary, but it is in fact an imperative necessity for the persistence of this pernicious system.

When, to cite an example, Brazil sells its agricultural products to China, or when China exports its industrialized products to us, it is not just the Chinese and us Brazilians who gain from these commercial operations.

Even without playing any effective role in the aforementioned transactions, the United States takes a significant slice of the pie. And all this because payments have to be made in dollars.

Due to its control of the international currency (the dollar), the United States began to expropriate resources from countries with which it was in conflict.

As all transactions had to be made in US currency, all resources in that currency in the global banking system were at the mercy of the designs of the US financial authorities.

This is how several disaffected countries were ROBBED by the United States of essential resources to maintain the lives of their people.

It happened with Libya, about 12 years ago, with Iran, more recently, with Venezuela and, now, with Russia.

Therefore, from the point of view of Trump, Biden and all those who defend the interests of imperialism (which, logically, includes our Bolsonarists), abandon the dollar and no longer consider it as the means of payment for all international transactions It is indeed a serious blow to the United States economy being able to move forward in a parasitic manner, sucking the blood of the people of the world to feed the ambitions of the big capitalists who control the foreign financial system and its servants around the world.

As for all of us who do not agree with the structure of domination set up by imperialism to exercise its parasitic hegemony, it is imperative that we fight to put an end to this aberration of having as a common currency an instrument that favors and facilitates our subjugation.

In other words, we must strive to ensure that our countries stop negotiating tied to mechanisms controlled by those who want to exploit us, in other words, we will fight for our transactions to be carried out outside the US dollar.

*Jair de Souza He is an economist and has a master’s degree in linguistics from UFRJ.

*This text does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Viomundo.