alt Hacker News"The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US dollar as a global reserve currency."
I would argue that for this to become even remotely possible, America's list of enemies must not automatically become everyone else's enemies too.
that is to say: the USA's secondary statutes have to become ineffective.
To do this, the EU's blocking statutes (to ignore secondary sanctions) have to be effective. Right now Europe's own companies just ignore the statutes to keep their US trade.
To make the blocking statues effective, the EU's own research recommended fines/sanctions/bans/… on licences for foreign (read US) banks, and companies that ignore the statue and don't serve EU companies trading with sanctioned countries.
But to do that, the EU would need alternatives to American services.
Power and influence follow sovereignty.
€0,02
Replies
The Chinese have alternatives to American services. Europeans could have too if we wanted.
> Right now Europe's own companies just ignore the statutes to keep their US trade.
If it’s the trade keeping EU companies in line, isn’t the destruction of trade that these tariffs are intended to achieve precisely the kind of thing that will then prevent them from staying in line in the future?
Europeans have a lot of alternatives to American services, including building out their own.
What Europeans truly lack is the ability to defend itself without the U.S. They have the technical know how and can build the manufacturing capacity but that will take a decade at least.
Also, European financing is just not as strong.
However, with the U.S. voluntarily walking away from its role as the center of the world, this may not be a problem for too long.
Tech is the easiest service to replace considering American tech workers by insisting on WFH have already largely eliminated the geographical advantages American tech used to have.