‘Nothing Can Stop De-Dollarization,’ Claims Russian Foreign Minister

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has talked about the move to national currencies and the de-dollarization of international markets. At a press conference on April 25 after speaking to the UN Security Council, Lavrov said that this shift could not be stopped and that the future of traditional international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was unclear.

The Russian news agency TASS says that Lavrov said:

“The shift to settlements in national currencies bypassing the dollar, the euro, and the [yen], to digital currencies can no longer be stopped, and the future of the international currency financial system, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, remains to be seen.”

Before the UN Security Council, the Russian official had said that the IMF was being used as a “tool” by the U.S. and its partners to reach their goals, even military ones.

Accusing the U.S.

Lavrov said at the news conference that the U.S. government was to blame for this change in the market. He said that the U.S. government had put in place and recently extended one of the largest sets of sanctions against the Russian Federation in its history. Lavrov said this about this:

“The Americans have started the de-dollarization process. Already now this process is being analyzed particularly by American political analysts and economists with deep concern.”

Janet Yellen, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, recently looked at what effect U.S. sanctions could have on the dollar monopoly. She realized that these could hurt the use of the dollar. Yellen did say, though, that they tried to use these “very important” tools “judiciously.”

Joseph Sullivan, a former adviser to the White House, has also talked about how the release of a BRICS bloc currency, which is being studied right now, would affect the dominance of the U.S. dollar. “It would begin the slow erosion of its dominance,” said Trump economic advisor Sullivan.