Main Points about Article on Europe attempts to undermine U.S. sanctions on Iran and establish alternatives to the dollar

In response to an article America's closest sllies are working hard to find ways to undermine the U.S. dollar by Fareed Zakaria

• “This week we watched an unusual spectacle. The foreign minister of Germany, one of the United States’ closest allies, went to Tehran and announced that a European payment system, designed as an alternative to the dollar-based one, would soon be ready. This visit was made in coordination with Britain and France, both of which helped create the new payment mechanism, called INSTEX.”
• “INSTEX will probably fail or prove to be wholly inadequate in the short term.”
• “Why? It’s simple: the Trump administration’s abuse of this power.” (the power being the dollar's dominance in global transactions)
  • Mutliple articles below show this is nothing new, such things were being attempted during Obama's presidency, and before.
• “They are not the only ones. The Chinese, Russians and Indians have also been trying to create mechanisms that would allow them to escape the hegemony of the dollar.”
  • And they all have been trying to do this since long before Trump.
• “look at the way the Trump administration has been wielding the threat of tariffs.”
  • Look at issues as far back as Clinton on issues such as dumping that created problems for critical U.S. industries. The case can be made that tariffs should have been used sooner.
• “Trump’s efforts to crush Chinese tech behemoth Huawei.”
  • Article entirely skips and reference to the bad actions of Huawei that long preceded Trump, its close ties with Chinese security, and the fact that Trump is stepping up to protect the U.S., Europe, and allied countries
    • “No Chinese company is fully independent of its government, which reserves the right to require companies to assist with intelligence gathering. Huawei is even more closely tied to the government than many Chinese firms: Its founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a former technologist in the People’s Liberation Army. As his company grew, so did international concerns about whether Huawei equipment could be used to spy on companies and governments around the world.”
    • “As far back as 2003, the company was accused of stealing intellectual property, including from U.S.-based network hardware maker Cisco. The companies settled out of court, but Huawei has been accused of stealing other firms’ intellectual property and violating international economic sanctions. Throughout 2018, a flurry of activity has signaled the level of concern in the international intelligence community, and pressure on the company – and other Chinese technology firms – has mounted.”

The point of this article is nothing new. Such attempts have been going on since at least the mid-1960's.

Various rogue countries have been looking for alternatives to the dollar for a long time, often to evade sanctions. However, according to the IMF, the dollar's share of Official Forex Reserves has remained the same under Trump as it was under Obama, 6.0 - 6.6 Trillion dollars, 62-63% of reserves.

The surplus of diplomats, and lack of top level bankers and finance experts, on the board of INSTEX, shows that INSTEX is more about politics than a serious effort to create a trade mechanism. In fact the dollar has continued to grow in stature.

“There is no alternative to the dollar,” said Mark Blyth, an international political economist at Brown University. “We’re stuck with the dollar, which gives the United States astonishing structural power.”

China has tried to compete, investing a trillion in alternative infrastructure. However its slowdown and repression of free speech, temper the appetite to hold Chairman Mao's money.

“What about China?” Mr. Blyth asked, rattling off possible alternatives to the dollar. “I could go there and disappear. This doesn’t inspire confidence. Once you start that kind of politics, you cannot be serious as a global currency.”

So here come politicans from the Euro zone. Problem, is as was predicted in the book of Daniel, the tribes of Europe have mostly the varnish of unity.

“The problems with the euro are problems with governance,” said Catherine Schenk, an economic historian at the University of Oxford. “It has been deeply flawed from the outset. It doesn’t look like a very safe haven to go to from the U.S. dollar.”

Russia has long been looking for alternatives to the dollar. Their inability to find such alternatives to the dollar, has allowed Trump to apply pressure on Putin and his cronies for their interference in the American election of 2016, which happened, and was known to be happening, by the Obama administration which took no efforts to fortify systems against Russian disruption that was known to the Obama Administration since 2015. In fact, for issues that later contributed to the call to spend $22 million on Mueller investigation, in the middle of supposed Russian vote rigging, Obama, on Oct 18, 2016, flat out denied the possibility of rigging our elections, saying “There's no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time.“

• The Dollar Is Still King. How (in the World) Did That Happen? 2019/02/22

• INSTEX: More About Politics Than Economics?
  • What is INSTEX? Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges

• What’s wrong with Huawei, and why are countries banning the Chinese telecommunications firm?
  • “its close ties with the Chinese government present national security threats to the U.S., Europe and allied countries.”

• Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) Q4-2017 to Q4-2018
  • https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ar/2016/eng/pdf/AR16-AppI.pdf - 2004 to 2014 - Share of national currencies in total identified official holdings of foreign exchange, end of year.
• Composition of Foreign Exchange Reserves 2015 2012 Q2 to 2015 Q2
• List of countries by foreign-exchange reserves

• composition of forex reserves
• forex reserves 2009

Obama presidency was January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017

• Articles during Obama administration about attempts to find alternatives to the dollar as world reserve currency
  • 2010: http://archive.fortune.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1007/gallery.Alternate_Currency.fortune/index.html - The dollar alternatives - The almighty dollar has lost a bit of its power lately, as central bankers diversify to other currencies in their reserves. Here are some of the options – both practical and absurd – to replace the greenback.
  • 2011 - 3 alternatives to the U.S. dollar - Chinese Renminbi (unlikely because of chinese protectiveness of its currency), Euro dollar (not likely because of sovereign debt fears, and volatility), IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) (not likely because it is not issued by a bank).
  • 2014 - 5 alternatives to the world's riskiest asset - the US dollar
    • “But it doesn't, because the world - to protect the value of the dollars it holds - lends the US even more money to prevent a default. The inflow of cash to the US also holds the dollar's value up - well beyond its real worth. The US is thus running the greatest Ponzi scheme on earth, by borrowing even more to consume and repay old debts. It will all end when the music stops.”
    • “Put another way, the world is as responsible for letting the US live beyond its means as the US itself.”

• CNBC: This is why dollar alternatives are non starters - By Dr. Michael Ivanovitch - independent analyst focusing on world economy, geopolitics and investment strategy. He served as a senior economist at the OECD in Paris, international economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and taught economics at Columbia Business School.
  • “America's “exorbitant privilege” of being able to pay its bills in the currency it prints at a zero marginal cost has been a matter of great controversy ever since the term was coined in the mid-1960s by the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was serving as a young finance minister at that time.”
  • Lots of details about the SDR
  • “No SDR, or any other financial contraption, can beat the liquidity and the formidable global banking infrastructure offered by the U.S. dollar. Not now, and not in the foreseeable future.”

• Google queries for further research:
  • alternatives to the dollar
  • what is instex
  • instex

• 10 factors making Russia election interference the most enduring scandal of the Obama era
  • CNN Fact-checking Trump's claims Obama 'did nothing' to stop Russian election interference
  • Washington Post: Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault June 23, 2017
    • “The White House debated various options to punish Russia, but facing obstacles and potential risks, it ultimately failed to exact a heavy toll on the Kremlin for its election interference.”
    • In early August 2016, “an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.”
    • “Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.”
    • “But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.”
    • “At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent. Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.”
    • The Russian hacking attempts were known by Obama administration since 2015.