The Biden administration's sanctions against Russia over Ukraine have accelerated de-dollarization, an academic says.
In a speech to the Djiboutian parliament last week, Kenyan President William Ruto questioned why African nations used the American currency for bilateral trade, stressing that "we must not involve the US dollar in local business activities."
"It's interesting how fast this development is occurring to move away from the dollar," economist Dr Jack Rasmus told Sputnik. "It's kind of accelerating around the world."
"There's a lot of interest across Africa multiplying to go more independent from the global capitalist US empire, and this is just a reflection of it," Rasmus noted. "And the same thing's going to happen in Asia, a lot more bilateral."
He said part of that trend was the increasing number of countries applying to join the BRICS group of emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
"More countries will start using alternative international payments system to the US-dominated SWIFT system," Rasmus predicted. "So the US global economic trading empire here is in deep doo-doo, and this trend will continue and looks to me like it's accelerating."
The measure of the dollar's hegemony has declined from making up 85 percent of national currency reserves worldwide in the 1970s to 58 percent now. The academic said "the train has left the station" and there was nothing Washington could do to reverse that slide.
He said the death knell for the dollar was the US Treasury's unprecedented sanctions on Russia, the world's biggest energy and food producer, following years if stoking Ukraine's conflict with Moscow.
"You've got to remember what precipitated all of this. US sanctions did it, and the rest of the world looked around and said 'gee, you know, we might be next. We'd better make some moves here to protect ourselves'," Rasmus said. "The Biden administration, history will show, shot itself in both feet with the sanctions, and its proxy war in Ukraine."
He said the US was trying to "circle the wagons" and keep its "economic allies and vassals" like Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand inside the fold — "but it's also losing control of the rest."
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