DECOUPLING FROM DOLLARS The US sends India billions in printed dollars for valuable goods. This is actually the US government ripping off India, like it does Vietnam, and everyone else, including its own citizens...not vice versa. To be precise: last year India exported $87B of valuable goods to the US for $42B of goods plus $45B worth of increasingly worthless dollars: That difference of $45B was, effectively, made up by money printing, which the Fed does at will: The current administration incorrectly thinks this is a bad deal for America, because they haven’t fully thought through the fact that the US can print dollars. India was giving America something that's always valuable (namely goods) for something that America can just print out of thin air (namely US dollars): So...who was really ripping off whom? As mentioned, this is the same trade America had with Vietnam. Vietnam worked hard to send America shoes, while America sent Vietnam printed dollars. And it’s the same trade America had with many countries, before the trade war. The world sends the US valuable goods, and gets mere Federal Reserve database entries in return: The only reason the US had the right to do that — to run the financial database of the world, to print trillions for itself, and to freeze and seize the funds of billions — is because it set up what we call the rules-based order, what is in reality the American Empire. And of course it profited from that empire tremendously, but so did most of the empire's participants. But now MAGA is dismantling that empire. It’s cutting off trade, talent, and even tourism. It’s abandoning its military commitments and telling allies to fend for themselves. It’s cutting off foreign aid and domestic universities. It is, in short, becoming a country not an empire. The reason is because MAGA is fundamentally confused. It romanticizes 1945 America (the manufacturing country) without fully admitting that 2025 America makes its money in a completely different way, by managing the hub of a global financial empire. Because the US is in denial about what it is — a money printer, not a manufacturer — it's currently on track to lose both the money-printing and the manufacturing. For example, the tariffs target the entire world (thereby reducing demand for the dollar in global trade) while also cutting off machine tools and raw materials from US entrepreneurs (thereby inhibiting the buildout of domestic manufacturing). Anyway, I won't linger on the outlook for the US. It's made its decision and will live with it. Perhaps it will indeed be a Golden Age of Reindustrialization. And perhaps the transition to a "republic, not an empire" will go much better than the similar imperial climbdown of the UK or the USSR. What should countries like India and Vietnam do? They should turn a necessity into a virtue. The trade war has provided a powerful Schelling Point for the entire world to simultaneously stop using the dollar at the same time. This is also what America says it wants, for foreigners to stop "exploiting" it by accepting its printed dollars for hard goods. So: abide by America's wishes and stop trading goods with America for dollars. Instead, trade goods with each other for local currencies (rather than USDs) and use gold for storing value (rather than USTs). Because there is no global reserve currency issued by a single country, trade remains roughly balanced over time. Singapore's former PM calls this "world minus one." It's the continuation of global capitalism, just without America, who has voluntarily taken itself out of the game. Yes, there's a short-term adaptation cost, but the quicker that a country can decouple from the dollar the better. Start saving in hard money instead.