Donald Trump and the dollar standard

TRUMPISM is in part an expression of American exhaustion at bearing burdens it first took up 70 years ago. Donald Trump has moaned less about the dollar than about shirking NATO allies or cheating trade partners. Yet the dollar standard is one of the most vulnerable pillars of global stability. And the world is far from ready for America to ditch its global financial role.

Unlike other aspects of American hegemony, the dollar has grown more important as the world has globalised, not less. In the Bretton Woods system devised for the post-war world, Western economies fixed their exchange rates to the dollar, which was in turn pegged to the price of gold. After the fracturing of this system under the inflationary pressures of the 1970s, the dollar became more central than ever. As economies opened their capital markets in the 1980s and 1990s, global capital flows surged. Yet most governments sought exchange-rate stability amid the sloshing tides of money. They managed their exchange rates using massive piles of foreign-exchange reserves (see chart). Global reserves have grown from under $1trn in the 1980s to more than $10trn today....