The dollar’s foreign policy
The primacy of the US dollar was built as much on alliances as on economics. As Washington grows more ambivalent about those alliances, the currency’s standing is at risk.
Barry Eichengreen
Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. His books include “Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History” (2015), “How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future,” with Livia Chitu and Arnaud Mehl (2017), “The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era” (2018), “In Defense of Public Debt,” with Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves and Kris James Mitchener (2021), and, most recently, “Money Beyond Borders” (2026).
The future of the dollar in international finance
The dominance of the U.S. dollar is being challenged from twodirections: the geopolitical and the technological. The so-called“weaponization” of the greenback through sanctions, along withdigital alternatives like stablecoins and China’s eCNY, seem tothreaten the dollar’s global role. But for now, these alternativesare more potential than reality.