Former President Donald Trump warned in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson the potential for China to push a large portion of the world off of the dollar standard would be the equivalent of America losing a world war.
Since the end of World War II – and some believe since the Industrial Revolution – the U.S. dollar has been the dominant currency worldwide. But the Chinese now seek to make the yuan more powerful.
Doing so, critics argue, could render the dollars and U.S. T-bonds held in other countries’ treasuries much less valuable as those governments would no longer hold the world’s dominant currency.
“Iran gets together with Saudi Arabia through China. And China is taking over,” Trump told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in an interview aired Wednesday.
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Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower, Monday, April 3, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
“And China — I heard a couple of people say, ‘Well, we’ll never lose a dollar standard.’ Are they kidding? China wants to change the standard, the currency standard. And if that happens, that’s like losing a world war. We’ll be a second-tier country.”
Trump said the West has already lost Brazil and is losing Colombia to Chinese influence within its own hemisphere. Iran and Russia, he added, are already in China’s corner.
Trump also pointed to France’s leaders meeting with President Xi Jinping in recent days.
“What’s going on? We’re losing. If we lose our currency — that’s the equivalent of losing a world war. Our currency is what makes us powerful and strong,” he said.
“And this was unthinkable during the Trump administration.”
Trump said if French President Emmanuel Macron made his overtures to China while he was in the White House, he would have confronted him on the telephone and threatened economic repercussions such as restricting French wine imports as punishment.
He said former White House adviser Stephen Bannon and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were very competent negotiators but were unable to score a deal with the French.
“France is very difficult. I will tell you. They’re all difficult because every country rips us off. But France is in particular very difficult,” he said.
Instead, Trump said, he personally got on the phone with the French and threatened 100% tariffs on champagne in response to Paris threatening taxing American companies, remarking American wine is “just as good.”
“[Then] I get a call back 15 minutes later: ‘We’ve decided we’re not going to charge American companies’ – But you know what happened once I left, now they’re charging them [under Joe Biden].”