French geopolitical expert Renaud Girard has warned of this incoming de-dollarization, caused by none other than the US itself. The expert said that Washington had overused the greenback as an instrument of political pressure, and nowadays more and more countries are starting to flee from the US-made global financial system. The alternative is to set up a bilateral foreign exchange in national currencies. Some states like Russia and China have gone even further and made their own payment systems.
"By turning their currency into an instrument of political pressure on other nations, the US has unwittingly launched a worldwide movement to overthrow the 'king-dollar'. Total de-dollarization will not happen overnight, but it is clearly an irreversible tendency," Renaud Girard told Le Figaro.
The expert cited the example of using the dollar as an instrument of suppression by referring to the French bank BNP Paribas. In 2014, the US Department of Justice sentenced the financial institution of an independent nation to a $9-billion monetary penalty for trade deals with Iran, Sudan and Cuba - countries that have been under US economic sanctions for decades. By doing so, the US authorities demonstrated that they didn't want others to trade with these countries using the dollar.
The French analyst also highlighted BRICS countries, pointing to their efforts to avoid using the greenback in bilateral transactions. The member states of this group plan to create their own currency for internal trade. He mentions the creation and dissemination of the Chinese Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) for bank transfers as an alternative to the American-led SWIFT system. Russia has also switched to using its own Mir banking system.
Gerard referred to the West's freezing of Russian dollar reserves in response to the beginning of Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as one of the latest moves in weaponizing the greenback. According to the expert, this leads to more and more countries reducing the share of the dollar in their foreign exchange, and that de-dollarization, while not coming about at the drop of a hat, will eventually materialize.