5 Items

Workers wearing personal protective equipment builds splash guards during a mass manufacturing operation to supply New York City government with protection to distribute against COVID-19.

AP Photo/John Minchillo

Analysis & Opinions - Atlantic Council

What COVID-19 Means For the United States’ Economic and Financial Statecraft

| Mar. 30, 2020

It is already evident that coronavirus (COVID-19) has triggered a deeper recession than that of the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis. Much like the latter, monetary authorities at the US Federal Reserve have undertaken unprecedented actions to support liquidity in global markets. These steps have included support for domestic debt markets, including a recent expansion in the corporate bond market, as well as swap lines targeting the global dollar shortage. Beyond these moves, the broader policy response during and after the COVID-19 outbreak may drive longer-term changes in the global trading system.  

Dollar bills

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

The Consequences of Weaponizing the U.S. Dollar

| July 22, 2019

Should INSTEX itself be sanctioned, it would be a powerful signal to the rest of the world. In this scenario, critical dollar-denominated trade not currently facing sanctions, but at potential risk of being sanctioned in the future, could migrate to third party currencies, transferred through sanctions-resistant entities to an INSTEX-like body.

The European Central Bank by the river Main in Frankfurt, Germany.

AP Photo/Michael Probst

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Too Big to Evade: The Costs of Europe Sticking with Iran

| Feb. 20, 2019

In spite of initial hopefulness, the Europeans will eventually face a reckoning with the facts: Washington’s financial leverage over Brussels has, arguably, never been greater since the establishment of the euro in 1999. The power of the U.S. Dollar and weaponization of the U.S. financial system cannot be challenged successfully by Europe at this moment.

 

A photograph of the U.S. dollar among international bank notes.

Creative Commons

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

The Future of the U.S. Dollar in a Post Iran Deal World

| Oct. 26, 2018

The European Union’s announcement in September 2018 that it would begin to create a special payments channel with Iran in response to the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) once again raises the question of the role of the U.S. Dollar (USD) in the international economic order.  Under the surface of discussions of alternative payment mechanisms is the legitimate question of the negative impacts of American coercive economic statecraft on the USD status as the leading global reserve currency.