International Currency Politics

The world’s reserve and leading currency will survive even during the transformation phase towards a multipolar order. 

Thomas Kolbe | April 23, 2026

In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump indicates the imminent return of Russia to the SWIFT payment system. It would mark the end of sanctions against Russia. But the Prussians are not shooting that fast anymore.

Currency policy is geopolitics. This is especially true as soon as the U.S. dollar is involved. And that is almost everywhere and at any time on the globe, no matter how often European and Chinese media sound the death knell over King Dollar. It may specifically be an annoyance to European politics and Beijing, but for the time being the U.S. dollar remains the world’s leading and reserve currency, giving the United States the leeway to defend their market dominance while rolling their debt burden relatively smoothly into the future. 

Washington is working under high pressure not to let this monetary configuration change, at least for the moment.

In this context, one must interpret the Truth Social post by President Trump from the weekend: Trump indicated in a video that Russia is ready to return to the U.S.‑regulated global financial system SWIFT.

In essence, Trump is saying that Russia has understood that SWIFT and the dollar represent the future -- not the dream of a BRICS currency. Indeed, one has heard little from the BRICS project in recent years; it seems the two main actors, China and Russia, are failing to anchor a currency system that ultimately depends on the monetary credibility of Beijing and Moscow. Who would really be willing to hold large portfolio shares and cash reserves in a Chinese CBDC that is exposed to Beijing’s political whims?

Back to Truth Social: it is well known that the U.S. president often behaves erratically in his media work. Yet this posting still offers an important clue as to the strategic line of American currency policy.

It is quite possible that the meeting of the two presidents, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, last year in Alaska marked the visible beginning of a gradual coordination of currency and energy policy between the United States, Russia, and China. It fits this narrative that the U.S. is again and again permitting Russia the sanction‑free sale of its oil in recent weeks and thereby signaling above all to Europe: ARC is real -- America, Russia and China are coordinating their activities, not least on the energy markets.

And the strategy is lying quite openly on the table: in the context of the Iran conflict and precisely at a moment of scarcity on the energy markets, Washington granted Russia the sanction‑free sale of its oil through the sales channel of its shadow fleet. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent extended this special arrangement last week for another month in order to relieve pressure from the oil and gas price cauldron. That turns the spotlight on the question of how energy is factored globally, and which currency dominates. At this point, the full power of the dollar empire unfolds.

The lion’s share of invoicing is, of course, carried out in U.S. dollars; somewhat more than eighty percent of global energy trade runs in U.S. dollars.

The creditworthiness of the United States is still beyond doubt. And demand for U.S. government bonds is currently higher than ever. The largest purchases of U.S. government debt come from Great Britain, the EU, and Japan. All three seek to ward off possible dollar shortages in a crisis. If flight to the greenback takes hold, these flows drive currency costs through the roof.

In addition, the attempt by European politics to use its own Euro currency to push into a potential vacuum left by the U.S. dollar has failed. The ill‑considered power‑political escapism of Brussels and London prevented them from using the global bond markets via the euro lever as a kind of dumping ground for the enormous state debts of European countries.

In Europe, one has shot oneself in the knee 20‑times in a row with a torrent of sanctions packages against Russia, possibly once even in the head. Moscow was the dominant international customer whose energy transactions were willingly settled in euros, thus stabilizing demand for the common currency. Russia settled its entire gas trade with Europe in euros. But this is history.

The idea of the euro as a leading currency is also now history; after European policymakers decided to put their economies on renewable “flutter power,” there is no turning back. Ideology has consequences, and this is particularly true for the currency market, which prices in national risks faster than others. For about three years now, the role of the euro in the international currency system has been eroding -- slowly but steadily. Looking at a bloodless, over‑regulated and no longer internationally competitive European industry, this trend is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.

At this point I want to restate my thesis from last year: the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve and leading currency will survive even during the transformation phase towards a multipolar order. At the same time, a new trade and negotiating balance will emerge between the United States and China. The fact that the United States will not be used as a pawn by Beijing in the future will be secured by the reordering of the Middle East, including control of the world’s most important maritime choke point, the Strait of Hormuz. The coming weeks and months will show who will dominate the geopolitical chessboard in this multipolar world.

For Europe there is one certainty: energy prices will, in the long run, settle on a higher plateau, ushering in an extended phase of inflation and industrial contraction.

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