The Top 3 Global Currencies That Are Coming For The US Dollar

While it isn’t currently in danger of becoming the world’s least valuable currency, the U.S. dollar has lost some ground. In fact, the U.S. dollar fell about 8% compared to the value of 16 highly traded currencies around the world in 2025.

The strength of the U.S. dollar relative to other world currencies has an impact on trade. A weaker U.S. dollar means that goods produced in the United States become cheaper in other nations while imports become more expensive. This pattern falls in line with the Trump administration’s economic goals of rebalancing trade and eliminating trade deficits with other nations. But a weakened dollar also makes it more expensive for Americans to travel to other countries. More importantly, a declining U.S. dollar fuels inflation, which further contributes to an increasingly K-shaped economy, where more Americans are dipping into their savings to survive and small businesses are slashing their jobs.

However, not all currencies are rising in value against the USD at the same rate. The three currencies that grew the most in value against the U.S. dollar in 2025 were the Swedish krona, the Mexican peso, and the Swiss franc. Each of these dynamics was influenced by specific causes, but economic uncertainty in the United States was a major underlying factor.

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Unlike most members of the European Union, Sweden opted to keep its currency instead of adopting the collective euro. And in the past year, the Swedish krona grew in value by 20.2% against the U.S. dollar and by at least 5% against the euro.

This growth is fueled by Sweden’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is projected to rise at nearly double the rate of EU’s in 2026, per a Bloomberg report. Sweden also has low public debt, which was 33.6% of the GDP at the end of 2024, per Fitch Ratings calculations. In comparison, the United States’ debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of 2024 was 114.5%. Additionally, investors have become increasingly interested in Sweden’s defense sector, and the currency has been pounced on by speculative investors not wishing to miss out on the krona’s rise, per a report from Stockholm-based bank SEB Group.

Notably, in times of global upheaval, currencies like the krona don’t usually perform as well as their counterparts from larger nations like the U.S. However, that situation seems to have flipped. In a November 2025 speech, Anna Seim, deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank (Sveriges Riksbank), opined, “… the dollar depreciation is likely to be related to financial flows out of dollar exposures due to uncertainty about U.S. economic policy. This breaks the historical pattern of the dollar as a safe harbor.”

The currency that appreciated the most in relation to the U.S. dollar was the Mexican peso, which saw its value increase by 15.6% in 2025. The primary reason behind the peso’s surge in value is that Mexico’s central bank has a policy interest rate of 7% — one of the steepest in the world. It’s a rate that the bank is reluctant to cut due to the amount of investment it attracts as well as an overall desire to avoid rampant inflation, Forex.com reported. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Federal Reserve has been sending mixed signals about potential rate cuts and is under pressure from the president to continue slashing its policy rate — a move that could further decrease the value of the U.S. dollar.  

Aside from interest rates, Mexico’s international tourism sector is booming, its perceived internal security situation is improving, and the country is still benefiting from “nearshoring,” Barchart reported. Nearshoring is the practice of relocating factories to a nearby nation (in this case, from the U.S. to Mexico) to reduce costs. In the U.S., this phenomenon has increased calls to renegotiate or terminate the USMCA free trade agreement. But even if the USMCA falls apart, Mexico still has 12 other free trade agreements, including one with the EU.

The Swiss franc is one of nine currencies that are sometimes worth more than the U.S. dollar. To put it in perspective, despite its recent decline, a U.S. dollar is worth around 17 Mexican pesos and more than 9 Swedish kronor as of mid-January 2026. Still, over the course of 2025, the Swiss franc’s value grew even higher versus the U.S. dollar by 14.5%. As of mid-January 2026, a Swiss franc was worth $1.25.

The Swiss franc has long been considered a safe-haven currency because of Switzerland’s neutral stance in foreign affairs as well as its low inflation, political stability, and strong economy. The value of the Swiss franc skyrocketed against the U.S. dollar for those same safe-haven reasons, ever since the Fed’s independence has been put into question by the Trump administration’s threat to indict Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, deVere Investments reported. The Swiss economy also benefited when Trump agreed to keep U.S. tariffs at 15% instead of 39% for Swiss goods after a lobbying campaign by Swiss executives.

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