Several countries have begun to trade in currencies other than the dollar as the US-led West continues to use punitive sanctions as a foreign policy tool — sanctions designed to throttle trade, strangle fund transfers through the Western controlled SWIFT payment system and freeze assets — physical and liquid assets.

This trend has gathered considerable momentum after the US-led West imposed sanctions against powerful countries like Russia and China leading to their decision to strengthen an available forum, Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS), with its expanding membership (including Iran) which President Trump has openly declared a war against.

In recent months’ Western attention has riveted on China procuring gold while reducing its investments in US treasuries/bonds by about 300 billion dollars - still a drop in the ocean as China’s total holdings of US bonds are over USD 3 trillion, which have suffered a rate decline due to the tariffs announced by President Trump on Liberation Day. This has led to discussions on whether some countries intend to revert back to the gold standard, defined as fixing the price for gold in their local paper currency rather than pegging it to the dollar or the Euro.

The gold standard reduced uncertainty in trade with price imbalances between trading countries offset by a balance of payment adjustment mechanism as gold, used to pay for imports, reduced the money supply of importing nations leading to deflation and thereby making them more competitive; while importation of gold by net exporters increased money supply causing inflation and making them less competitive.

To put it from a historical perspective, the demise of the gold standard began soon after the end of........

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