在面对美国对俄罗斯实施的重大制裁后，“去美元化”讨论在中国、印度、巴西、俄罗斯以及南非等国家间日益兴起。前美国总统特朗普表示这一货币面临威胁，并且声称如果他再次当选总统，任何弃用美元的国家在其进口商品上都将面临新关税。
今天的大亚洲观点播客中，主持人K. Oanh Ha与Bloomberg资深华盛顿记者Saleha Mohsin讨论了美元在世界经济中的独特角色以及它有可能失去世界储备货币地位的原因。Mohsin解释说，作为全球储备资产的所有者一直是最大经济体的所在地。英国之前曾担任这一角色，在19世纪80年代，美国凭借其经济规模超过了英国。直到二战后的1944年，在盟国四十四个国家的财政政策制定者的共同努力下，《布雷顿森林协议》诞生，他们决定通过创建一个全球经济紧密相连、共享经济目标的方式避免第二次世界大战的发生。
在会议上，美国及其美元被选定为全球金融体系的核心货币，因为美国的经济规模以及其良好的财政轨迹。同时，国际货币基金组织和世界银行也在此时成立，这些事件共同促使了美国及其美元成为世界储备资产的地位。
不过Mohsin同时也提到，美元的强韧性得到了维持。它在两层定义上都是强大的：第一是在外汇汇率上的强势表现，即与日元、人民币、欧元等其他货币的比较；第二是其绝对主导地位，全球金融市场几乎完全依赖于美元，这赋予了美元巨大的实力和权力。
至于其他国家为何被激励使用美元，则主要基于以下几个原因。首先，美元被认为是一个安全的投资选择，无论中央银行、跨国公司或个人都可以投资美国政府债务或持有任何美元资产，并在任何时候都能获得回报。这是因为美国拥有大量的经济创新，以及庞大的财政赤字驱动的经济力量和世界上最强大的军事力量。
特朗普自从今年三月以来就开始关注“去美元化”的讨论，以及自俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后实施的重大制裁行动引发的情况变化。他宣布将采取措施保护美元地位，并威胁称如果再次当选总统，将对从中国进口的商品征收高达60%的新关税。这被看作是对现有情况的一次大幅升级。
特朗普的担忧不是唯一的——自从9/11事件以来，每任美国总统都利用经济制裁作为实现外交政策目标的手段。根据使用经济制裁的数量图表显示，这条线在过去几十年一直在上升，并且在奥巴马政府时期增长更多，在特朗普和拜登政府期间再次上升。
对于美国财长关注到其他可能寻求“去美元化”的国家以及特朗普本人是否对货币操纵持有直接责任的问题，Mohsin回答说并非如此。自20世纪中期至全球经济危机前后，存在指控中国进行货币操纵的案例，但美国选择不采取行动以利用后门渠道和谈判促使中国减少这一行为。
中美之间的关系被形容为一种复杂而相互依赖的关系，货币是其中的重要组成部分。作为书中的章节，“一场动荡的婚姻”描述了两个国家虽然存在矛盾但仍深刻地互相关联的事实——在2008年全球经济危机之后就是这样一个例子：美国引发的危机波及全球，导致所有国家遭受损失。中国拥有大量美元资产（包括股票、债券等），如果美国经济状况不佳，这些投资将受到影响。
面对特朗普计划保护美国内外汇地位的问题，Mohsin解释称我们对竞争对手卡玛拉·哈里斯的观点知之甚少。目前她的政策缺乏具体细节和明确立场，在很大程度上依赖于拜登政府的政策。
关于美元是否有可能被取代为世界储备货币的讨论，Mohsin指出情况正在发生变化，但仅限于言论层面上，并没有国家抛弃美元。她指出美元能够继续发挥作用有三个主要原因：规模庞大、稳定性高以及根深蒂固——这是由于美国经济体量巨大，在全球经济中几乎无人能敌（比如中国、日本和德国）。投资者对美元的信任来自于美国的强大机构支持，包括法律保障、独立的机构以及自由公正的选举。
尽管存在“去美元化”的讨论，并且这种情况可能需要数十年的时间逐渐展开，但它将对全球多国贸易产生深远影响。历史上，世界储备资产的替换往往发生在经济危机期间。至于中国人民币取代美元的可能性，则非常有限——中国的经济体量虽然巨大（排名世界第二），但与美国相距甚远；同时，国际投资者更倾向于由民主开放的国家提供金融系统基础，以确保透明度，这一点并非中国政府所具备。
这期播客内容在以下人员的帮助下完成：制作人Jessica Beck、Yang Yang；编辑Caitlin Kenney；高级编辑Elisabeth Ponsot。首席执行制片人Nicole Beemsterboer；声音设计/工程师Blake Maples以及事实核查员Thomas Lu共同完成。
新闻来源：www.bloomberg.com
原文地址：Trump Says the US Dollar Is in Danger. Could China’s Yuan Ever Replace It?
新闻日期：2024-09-24
原文摘要：
Never miss an episode. Follow today.Talk of de-dollarization has been gaining momentum among China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa in the wake of significant US led sanctions on Russia. Former US President and candidate Donald Trump has said the currency is under attack — and that any country that shuns it would face new tariffs on imports if he is elected.On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha talks to Bloomberg’s Saleha Mohsin about the unique role the dollar plays in the world economy — and what, if anything, could replace it.Read more: Further listening: Listen and follow The Big Take Asia on , or wherever you get your podcasts Terminal clients: click to subscribe Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:K. Oanh Ha: Former President Donald Trump says the the US dollar is under attack. Donald Trump: And we will keep the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, and it is currently under major siege. Many countries are leaving the dollar. Ha: Since this spring, Trump has been expressing concern over the idea that other countries may want to move away from the dollar and he’s announced plans to try to keep that from happening. This is from a rally he held in Wisconsin this month.Trump: They are not going to leave the dollar with me. I'll say you leave the dollar. You're not doing business with the United States because we're gonna put 100 percent tariff on your goods. Sir, we would like very much to get back to the dollar immediately. Thank you very much. It's so easy. Saleha Mohsin: Trump, he pioneered new ways of using tariffs as a weapon of statecraft during his first presidency.Ha: Saleha Mohsin is Bloomberg’s senior Washington correspondent and host of our Big Take DC podcast.Mohsin: And he is already promising to go full bore next time, even deploy this giant tariff to protect apparently the US dollar.Ha: Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I’m Oanh Ha. Every week, we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies, and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region. Today on the show: could the US dollar really lose its special status as the world’s reserve currency? And could the Chinese yuan replace it? Ha: Saleha you have this new book out, all about the dollar – Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order – remind us how the dollar became the world's reserve currency in the first place?Mohsin: So the owner of the world's reserve asset is always the world's largest economy. So before the US, it was Great Britain. And in the 1880s, the US outstripped Great Britain in terms of sheer economic size. But it didn't happen so quickly. It was 1944 after two world wars, when the economic policymakers of 44 allied nations gathered together for what later became the Bretton Woods Agreement. And they all decided that the best way to avoid another world war would be to create an economic brotherhood where the world economy is knitted close together around shared economic goals.And they decided at that meeting that the US dollar, because of the US's economic size and also because of the US's very good fiscal trajectory at the time, that the US dollar should be the anchor currency for the global financial system. And two other important things happened – the World Bank was created and the International Monetary Fund were created. And all of that put together made the US and its dollar become the world's reserve asset.Ha: And of course, the dollar’s maintained its strength.Mohsin: It has. The dollar is still strong. Now, there are two definitions of a strong dollar. There's strength in terms of foreign exchange rate, how it compares to another currency, the yen, the yuan, the euro. The second definition of a strong dollar is its sheer dominance. The whole global financial system is underpinned by the dollar. That gives the dollar a lot of strength and power and that is another definition to a strong dollar.Ha: And how is it or actually why is it that other countries are incentivized to use dollars? Mohsin: There's a couple of reasons. One, it's a safe investment. You will always get a return on that investment. You can park your cash, a foreign central bank, a foreign multinational company, a foreign individual can buy US government debt or have any of their asset in American stocks, anything that is denominated in dollars coming out of the US, you are going to get a return on your investment because the US has a lot of economic innovation that is driven by its very huge fiscal deficit. It is also the owner of the world's most powerful military, which is also driven by our huge fiscal deficits. Ha: But now we have Donald Trump out there basically saying the dollar is in danger of losing its special status and he’s saying that other countries are actually leaving the dollar – why is he saying that now? I mean are other countries actually thinking about trading less with the dollar? Mohsin: He has since March, been publicly showing that he has paid attention to the de-dollarization discussion, and, and actions that have launched since the US-led economic sanctions on Russia. It was really the economic sanctions package in February 2022 when they invaded Ukraine. That was a massive package. And what it did was heavily curtail Russia's access to the dollar, including its central bank. It really put allies, even, and then a lot of adversaries on guard that the US is willing to go quite far to fight a proxy war with another country in terms of weaponizing the dollar. And so you see the BRICS plus economies, that's Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and it's a growing club, of economies coming together saying, let's put our heads together and find a way to trade less with the dollar and have our own shared currency so that we're less beholden to US economic sanctions in case we run afoul of whoever the sitting president might be.Ha: Now Trump has said he’ll answer those concerns about trading less with the dollar with some really big sweeping new tariffs – he’s said if he wins a second term he’ll put in place a 10% across-the-board tariff and on goods imported from China, it’s going to go as high as 60%. That sounds like a real ramp up, certainly from his first term as president. What do you make of that? Mohsin: Yeah. You know, he's noticed the economic sanctions fatigue that is out there. He talks about how, you need to be, judicious in use of economic sanctions and maybe tariffs is the way to go, because if you're using tariffs on the surface of it, it looks like you are leveraging the US consumer market rather than leveraging the strength of the dollar to sort of carry out your economic policy goals.Ha: Isn't Trump himself responsible for some countries looking to de-dollarize with his threat of tariffs and sanctions?Mohsin: Trump is not the only president who bears responsibility. I would say every president since 9/11 has used economic sanctions to achieve foreign policy goals. And If you look at a chart of the use of economic sanctions, the line just goes straight up. And they went up a lot under Obama as well. They went up even more under Trump and then even more under Biden.Ha: After the break, how the US and China have tussled over allegations of currency manipulation in the past. And could the Chinese yuan replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency?Ha: We’ve been talking about former President Donald Trump and concerns that the US dollar could be replaced as the world’s reserve currency. And when it comes to the dollar and global trade, Trump’s also accused other countries of currency manipulation - and one country he’s pointed the finger at repeatedly is China.Trump: But that’s happening and it’s happening even worse with China. They manipulate their currency better than any country in the history of the world in history. History.Trump: And we are now working on a new trade deal with China but it must include real structural change to end unfair trade practices Trump: Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulation Ha: And besides China, there are other Asian countries that the US Treasury Department says it's monitoring for currency practices – places like Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Japan was added to the list this summer. What is the US’s concern overall about what could happen with these other currencies?Mohsin: The general concern is just that countries will meddle with the terms of trade with the natural laws of supply and demand and keep down the value of their currencies against the dollar in order to capitalize on the US consumer market, and that is not good for American manufacturers and companies and blue collar workers. In the mid 2000s and around the global financial crisis, there allegedly was a case to be made to charge China with actual currency manipulation. But the US decided not to do it because they wanted China's cooperation, and they were trying to sort of use backdoor channels and talks to slowly wean China off that habit.Ha: And of course that relationship between the US and China has been a symbiotic one, right? Which you also talk in the book as well. I mean, how does that work through currency? Mohsin: Yeah, and it's a chapter that I call a turbulent marriage because the US and China, they need each other. They are deeply entrenched with each other still, but they're at odds with each other. Now, the example that I can give is that in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008, you know, it was an American-made crisis that spilled into the rest of the world. Everyone suffered. And the Chinese had a humongous holding of assets in US dollars, whether it was shares or ownership stocks in Fannie and Freddie or in US treasuries or US government bonds.So if treasuries and the US economy was not doing well, it was bad for China because of their investments, and so China couldn't say, Okay, we're pulling out of the US economy because as they would pull out of this massive stake, you know, the first 10 percent maybe you'd win. And then the next 90 percent, prices would just plummet and you would take a loss, right? And the US also realized that we need to keep in close contact with China because we need their support. We don't want them to pull out. And that relationship, just that one tiny example, it tells you how deeply integrated the two countries are.Ha: Mmm. We've talked a lot about Trump and his plans to try to protect the US economy and its status as a world's reserve currency. What do we know about what his opponent Kamala Harris has said or has in mind to, you know, around the dollar?Mohsin: We don't know anything. We have not heard. There is an absolute paucity of policy when it comes to Harris's campaign right now. We don't know much about her foreign policy or her sort of international economic diplomacy and plans. Part of that has to do with the fact that she launched her campaign very late. Part of it has to do with the fact that she could rely on the Biden administration and lean on some of those policies.Ha: Okay so we’ve talked a lot about concerns that the dollar could be replaced as the world’s reserve currency – but based on your reporting – how likely is it that this could actually happen? Mohsin: One thing to point out is that the tide is turning, but only in terms of rhetoric. No one has abandoned the dollar. There is slightly less trade in the dollar compared to before, but it will be very hard to actually supplant the dollar. There's three main reasons for that. It's because the dollar is big, it's stable, and it's entrenched. So the dollar rules because the US economy is the biggest. It is almost biggest as numbers two, three, and four on that list – China, Japan, and Germany, combined. Banknotes have the words, “in God we trust”, printed on them, but it's the strength of American institutions that underpin investors faith in the dollar, rule of law, independent institutions, free and fair elections.And as I illustrate in Paper Soldiers, the Treasury secretaries, in the way they've dealt with foreign governments, the dollar has this power of incumbency on its side. You know, it's like trying to say that English is not going to be the world's universal language. So that's sort of a starting point. But there is definitely more discussion about de-dollarization. It's a lot of rhetoric, a few small moves. Now, nothing would happen quickly. This could take a decade, maybe two decades to actually play out. But it would mean that multinational companies, smaller emerging markets, frontier markets and midsize economies would need to consider how they trade. So it's really hard to say exactly how this would play out. In the past it’s taken an economic crisis for a world's reserve asset to be dethroned. Ha: Obviously it would have huge ramifications for the global economy. but, you know, you do have China, the world's second largest economy. Could China, could the yuan be a currency that supplants the dollar potentially? I mean, is there a contender to supplant the dollar? Mohsin: There really isn't a contender. A lot of people talk about the Chinese yuan. Now, China's economy is the world's second largest, but it is still second place by a long gap. The other thing is that investors are really tied to the world's reserve asset being backed by a democracy, an open democracy, and that is not what China has. And the reason investors want democracy underpinning the anchor to the world's financial system is because that comes with transparency, which is also something that the Chinese yuan doesn't offer. This episode was produced by: Jessica Beck, Yang Yang; Editors: Caitlin Kenney; Senior Editor: Elisabeth Ponsot. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer; Sound Design/Engineer: Blake Maples; Fact-checker: Thomas Lu.
