My Take | How America ended up creating the adversarial Brics of today
What began as a newfangled investment theme for emerging economies now holds hope for those trying to flee US financial coercion and abuse
If Donald Trump is Tariff Man, Joe Biden was Sanctions Man. By virtue of owning the world’s biggest economy and the almighty dollar, the United States has long exploited both superpowers to its advantage. Will Trump 2.0 merge both powers to become not just Superman but Ultraman? That seems more than likely.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, America’s economic exploitation has increasingly turned into economic coercion and abuse against foes and sometimes even friends.
First deployed as a tool of the “war on terror”, the US discovered an all powerful toy – its ability to monitor vast troves of financial data in real time to track the trade and money transfers of almost everyone, not just suspected terrorists.
This gives it unprecedented power to impose sanctions, which are today being forced upon individuals, officials, companies, whole economies and countries, at the drop of a hat. And they don’t have to be criminals, terrorists or rogue states; they just need to be enemies or unfriendly entities. In some cases, even friends and allies are not exempt.
Swift, for example, is supposed to be a neutral global financial messaging and payment network. But Washington has abused its dollar dominance as a currency of exchange to turn the platform into a powerful surveillance system to check on who’s paying or trading with whom.
In effect, by paying Swift for its services, financial institutions and government agencies around the world are subsidising Washington to monitor and punish them.
And since everyone needs US dollars to transact at some point, they are all at its mercy.
