Trump just announced a big, paranoid threat against the BRICS+ nations on his new favorite social media platform:
We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.
This actually reveals a lot about the direction of Trump’s foreign policy.
Dollar primacy—aka dollar hegemony, aka dollar supremacy, aka dollar dominance, aka dollar imperialism—is a bad deal for the working class, but it matters to Trump because it’s a big deal to Wall Street financiers and to the national security state.
More importantly though, dollar supremacy is a key site of contradiction in the Trump/MAGA/NatCon project, and the first step to making US foreign policy less evil is working out those contradictions.
Let me explain.