America’s political establishment has less respect for the U.S. dollar than our foreign adversaries.
That was made clear when Tucker Carlson recently interviewed the Russian strongman President Vladimir Putin, who clearly articulated how the uniparty in Washington is destroying America’s greatest strategic and economic asset — her currency. (RELATED: JD FOSTER: Here’s One Way To Actually Get Congress To Do Something About America’s Bloated Budget)
Last year, led by the chairman and ranking member of the relevant House and Senate committees, a bipartisan and bicameral bill was introduced that would hand another $300 billion to the Ukraine, this time in the form of the confiscated U.S. dollars owned by the Russian central bank and the Russian people.
There are now renewed calls for this measure as both the budget battle at home and the war in the Ukraine drag on.
Not during the Vietnam or Korean wars or at any point during the height of the Cold War did America do this to the Soviet Union. U.S. statesmen understood then, as our adversaries do now, that the dollar’s reserve currency status is among our most important global assets, both economically and strategically.
This steadfast principled commitment facilitated our post-war expansion of influence over global affairs and commerce, directed investment to the U.S., and kept inflation at bay by parking dollars as reserves the world over.
Eager to demolish this foundation of our global presence and dam that holds back inflation, the Washington uniparty is rallying behind the next step to gut the U.S. dollar.
We warned on this site before how Biden’s unprecedented freezing of U.S. dollars owned by a foreign central bank has fundamentally jeopardized the currency’s hard-won reserve status. In fact, it’s a main factor now driving dozens of countries away from what they see as a dangerous and unpredictable United States — countries now including France and Saudi Arabia.
Of course, China is eager to exploit these fears and welcome countries into its rapidly growing BRICS anti-dollar bloc.
After the Biden administration spent months scoffing at the mere hint of de-dollarization, Janet Yellen dropped a bombshell last year, casually admitting that not only is de-dollarization happening, but Americans should expect more – in her words, it’s “only natural” for countries to flee the dollar since the world is big.
In fact, countries are not fleeing the dollar because the world is big, they are fleeing because Biden made them question the U.S. dollar by using it as a political football where countries must grovel and obey Washington or risk having their national patrimony frozen.
Nations who disagree with Biden on abortion, homosexuality, fossil fuel use, etc. also run the risk of seeing their dollar reserves taken away. As if on cue, the Biden administration has threatened sanctions against countries with anti-sodomy laws such as Uganda.
This asset seizure bill would dramatically up the ante. If the U.S. is willing to not just freeze, but actually hand over a nation’s entire dollar reserves to another country, it confirms the worst fears of any country questioning whether they can count on the dollar or the U.S. at all.
As more nations lose confidence in the dollar, they will sell their dollars. If enough countries do this, those trillions will come flooding home to America — essentially 70 years of deficits pouring in almost all at once.
This tsunami could set off an inflation the likes of which we haven’t seen in a century. Imagine the last three years of price increases put on steroids, amphetamines and covered in nicotine patches.
At a minimum, it’d be multiple years of double-digit inflation like we’re used to seeing in third world countries. At worst, it’d be a full-blown Weimar Republic replacing wallets with wheelbarrows for carrying around currency.
Such an economic catastrophe would, of course, take America off the world stage, not by choice but by necessity. The uniparty would have made their virtue-signaling gift to the Ukraine at the expense of America’s very standing as a world power.
The naïve calls for currency manipulation are a defiling of the dollar’s sanctity and an assault on people’s property rights. If the uniparty in Congress and the Biden administration push the issue much further, it will mean a long walk off a short pier into an ocean of misery for the American people.
E.J. Antoni is a public finance economist, and Peter St. Onge is the Mark A. Kolokotrones fellow in economic freedom, at The Heritage Foundation.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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