President Donald Trump’s mission to radically restructure the world economy is catnip to dollar doomsters, but raises few doubts for staunch believers in the currency’s primacy in global finance. All conversations about threats to the greenback’s role as the world’s reserve currency tend toward either imagining a collapse of American financial dominance, or stubborn shouts of TINA — There Is No Alternative. Far more likely is a slow grinding evolution into a world where different countries and currencies hold spheres of influence, a shift from the recent unipolar era.
There are alternative monies in this world and the best of them is the euro. For Europe to enjoy some of the privileges that belonged to the US alone for decades, the euro doesn’t need to become the preeminent global currency. Nor must the dollar suffer a fall from grace as deep as sterling did over the first half of the 20th century as the British Empire unraveled.
