Overview
- The Financial Times reports that the Trump administration is exploring support for dollar adoption in fragile-currency countries as part of a strategy to blunt Beijing’s push to reduce global dollar use.
- Argentina is highlighted as a leading candidate due to repeated crises of confidence in the peso and its long history of de facto reliance on the U.S. currency.
- Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, acknowledged meetings with dollarization advocate Steve Hanke since August but emphasized that no decision has been made.
- Argentina’s economy minister, Luis Caputo, said in early October that the country lacks sufficient dollars to implement full dollarization at present.
- The IMF cautions that dollarization could bind Argentina to U.S. Federal Reserve policy and risk persistently low growth, while Hanke contends it could curb chronic capital flight; other countries cited include Lebanon, Pakistan, Ghana, Turkey, Egypt, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.