Excerpt - Quinn Slobodian responds to listener questions
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the highest stakes is with the sanctity of the US dollar at a global level. And indeed, I actually think this is the core of Trump's sense of resentment and anger is the disconnect between the US dollar as the world's reserve currency on the one hand, and then the inability of the United States to make use of that power as it pleases. So

It seems to Trump that if everyone is using dollars, then the U.S. should be able to tell them what to do with those dollars. But actually, the whole essence of the strength of the dollar is that that's not the case. It's impervious to U.S. economic policy for the most part. And, you know, through thick or thin becomes a place that countries feel like they can stock up their own capital and so on.

Something like a planned attempt to work against economic logic would, I think, accelerate people's movement out of dollars. It's already starting to happen. There are cracks appearing.

And I think something like that would be the fastest way to make that happen in terms of a ruble block, in terms of a new sort of BRICS reserve currency movement to the renminbi. There's already hints of that at the margins. And I think too much more evidence of the U.S. as an untrustworthy steward of global economic interdependence will just accelerate that move.

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