But perhaps there has never been a moment when, in most corners of the world, the spring tide of "de-dollarization" has been like this: sweeping away with lightning speed!

In fact, when people in the industry review the global financial market movements this week, they can easily list a series of events that may now endanger the "dollar hegemony" in less than 72 hours from Tuesday to Thursday. "The event, the accelerated global de-dollarization trend represented by the BRICS countries and other emerging markets, suddenly began to "blossom everywhere":

Event ① Chinese and French oil giants complete the first LNG cross-border RMB settlement transaction: On Tuesday (March 28), CNOOC and Total Energy completed China's first domestic import settlement in RMB through the Shanghai Oil and Gas Trading Center platform Liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchase transactions, the transaction volume is about 65,000 tons, and the LNG resources come from the United Arab Emirates. With the increasing acceptance of RMB in the international market, the conditions for buyers and sellers to try to use RMB for settlement have become increasingly mature.

Event ② The Saudi cabinet approved the decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: The Saudi Arabian cabinet approved the decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on Wednesday (March 29). Since its establishment 21 years ago, the SCO has always maintained a momentum of healthy and stable development, and successfully explored a new path of cooperation and development for regional organizations. The increasingly close diplomatic relationship between China and Saudi Arabia has made the outside world have constant expectations for the bright future of the petro-yuan. A few days ago, the Export-Import Bank of China has successfully reached the first RMB loan cooperation with the National Bank of Saudi Arabia.

Event ③Brazil announced a direct settlement with China in local currency: The Brazilian government stated on Wednesday that Brazil has reached an agreement with China to no longer use the US dollar as an intermediate currency, but to conduct trade settlement in local currency. Recently, the People's Bank of China and the Central Bank of Brazil signed a memorandum of cooperation on the establishment of RMB clearing arrangements in Brazil. Many foreign media said that this agreement allows China and Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, to directly conduct large-scale trade and financial transactions. This is the "latest surprise attack" of the yuan against the US dollar.

Event ④ The meeting of ASEAN finance ministers and central bank governors discussed "financial independence and self-reliance": Finance ministers and central bank governors of the ten ASEAN countries held a meeting in Indonesia on Thursday. This is an extension of the previous Southeast Asian Local Currency Settlement (LCS) scheme, which has begun to be implemented among ASEAN member countries. Indonesian President Widodo specifically emphasized: "Staying away from Western payment systems is necessary to protect transactions from 'possible geopolitical influence'."

It is not difficult to list that among the participants in the above-mentioned series of "de-dollarization" events, there are European energy giants, OPEC's "big brother", South American resource giants who are unwilling to be regarded as the back garden of the United States, and some Hope to build a model of regional cooperation and development in Southeast Asia.

At the same time, outside of these countries, we must not forget that there are many economies that have previously determined to cut off from the dollar, or are trying to embark on a path of de-dollarization. Their names are:

Russia: Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out last year, it is clear that no country in the world has been more determined to divest the dollar than Russia. Over the past year, Western countries, led by the United States, have imposed an unprecedented wave of financial sanctions against Russia, including freezing nearly half of Russia's foreign exchange reserves ($300 billion) and pulling Russia's major banks from Association system (SWIFT) removed. Since then, the currencies of Western countries represented by the US dollar, the euro and the pound have been regarded by Russian officials as "unfriendly national currencies" or even "toxic currencies"...

India: In energy trade with Russia after the Russo-Ukraine crisis, India has actually been making no secret of its desire to push the rupee globally. The rupee-ruble exchange mechanism adopted by Russia and India in March 2022 to bypass US dollar settlement has now been in place for a year. Recently, the United Arab Emirates and India are also negotiating to use rupees to trade non-oil commodities, thus replacing the original US dollar payments. Earlier this year, Indian refiners had started paying in UAE dirhams, rather than dollars, for most of their Russian oil purchases through traders in Dubai. The RBI last week also approved central banks of 18 countries, including Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, to open special Vostro rupee accounts (SVRA), which will allow them to settle payments in Indian rupees as part of the massive de-dollarization of trade. action.

South Africa: In January this year, South African Foreign Minister Pandor publicly stated that they are studying how the BRICS countries can help them establish a fairer currency trading system, thus getting rid of the control of the US dollar. Pandol pointed out that one of the reasons why the BRICS countries established the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) in 2014 was to find an alternative to the US dollar-based payment structure. “We are looking at how the BRICS New Development Bank and other institutions can help us create a fairer currency trading system,” she explained.

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If we count all the economies that intend to implement or promote the de-dollarization process, it is obviously not difficult to find that from Asia to Africa to South America, a global "de-dollarization" front is quietly forming, and among them, The BRICS countries - China, Russia, India, Brazil and South America are clearly becoming the core of this evolution process, and many emerging economies in the Middle East and Southeast Asia are also playing key roles in this process.

So, behind all this, is there an inevitable choice of history in the dark?

This time! The wave of global "de-dollarization" has really come...

Interestingly, this sudden wave of global "de-dollarization" even attracted the attention of Tesla CEO Musk on Thursday.

On March 30, Musk shared his views on this issue on Twitter. He said, "This is a serious problem. The US policy is too tough, which makes other countries want to abandon the dollar. Coupled with the (US) government spending is too large, which forces other countries (forced) to bear a lot of our money. Some inflation."

Musk made the comments at the time while commenting on a series of tweets by a Twitter user about the issue of "de-dollarization." A Twitter account introduced Genevieve Rock-Dickert, a former fund manager and financial writer for Bloomberg and other media, who tweeted on the 30th that "the US dollar is losing its status as a reserve currency." and introduces the background on this trend.

Historically, the U.S. dollar has been a safe haven for international investors, Dickert said. In times of crisis, funds are often converted into dollars, a practice employed by investors seeking to hedge risks in other economies. But now, de-dollarization is happening around the world, with central banks buying gold at a faster pace last year than in any year since 1987, suggesting that these countries want to back their currencies with gold rather than dollars.

Add to that the US's own crumbling banking system, and the fact that it's impossible to raise interest rates now without causing even more damaging consequences.

Coincidentally, former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill (Jim O'Neill) earlier this week also called on the BRIC Group to expand its scale and challenge the dollar's dominance.

The former chief economist of Goldman Sachs is well-known in the industry as the "father of the BRICS" - he is the creator of the term "BRICS". O'Neill is now calling for the BRICS to expand to include emerging nations such as Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Philippines to create a fairer, multi-currency global system.

In a paper published in the journal Global Policy, O'Neill wrote that the dollar currently plays an overly dominant role in global finance. Whenever the Fed starts to tighten monetary policy, or conversely loosen monetary policy, the impact on the value of the dollar and its knock-on effects are huge. The dollar's dominance is a burden for countries with dollar debt because their monetary policies become unstable when exchange rates fluctuate.

O'Neill believes that dollar dominance destabilizes the monetary policies of other countries, which is why the BRICS countries should resist dollar dominance.

The inevitable choice of history?

There is no doubt that when many countries took de-dollarization actions at the same time this week, and at the same time Musk and the "father of the BRICS" also began to turn their attention to this time, it will definitely not be just a mere coincidence...

Goldman Sachs managing director and macro trader Bobby Molavi said recently: "One of the arguments I have heard is that the dollar reserve currency system is coming to an end, and we are moving towards a more multi-polar reserve system."

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has largely been in a unipolar era for a long time - the United States is the undisputed hegemon, and the US dollar is the most accepted currency. Even though the fixed exchange rate system collapsed in the early 1970s and the euro was born at the end of the last century, it failed to challenge the "excessive privilege" enjoyed by the US dollar. Today, nearly 60 percent of the foreign exchange reserves held by central banks around the world are held in dollars.

But all this is clearly not going to be permanent, and the incentive for countries to accelerate their shift away from the dollar has only grown over the past year.

Unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia by Western powers led by the United States last year, froze Russia's ability to use half of its reserves and restricted Russian banks' ability to use the critical SWIFT system for transactions, shocking many countries otherwise left out. The "weaponization" of the US dollar has provided new impetus for the efforts of various countries to de-dollarize.

At the same time, the "reverse currency war" triggered by the high inflation that has ravaged the world over the past year, and the Fed's aggressive rate hikes regardless of the life and death of other countries have pushed the dollar soaring, and almost all non-US economies have once again felt the impact of a strong dollar. "Poison". Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury John Connally’s arrogant saying in the 1970s—“The dollar is our currency, but your problem” has been fulfilled again in the new century.

Of course, in addition to the "anger and grievances" of the dollar hegemony itself, we may also need to look at what is currently happening from a more macro level.

In fact, the topic discussed by the ASEAN financial leaders on Thursday provided the world with a very interesting perspective, that is, this time these Southeast Asian countries want to "not only change the life of the US dollar", but also the euro and the yen. And British Pound - These countries discussed "reducing dependence on the US dollar, euro, yen and British pound in the transaction process", and promoted the system construction and transaction scale of local currency clearing.

This could mean a complete reshaping of the global monetary system and the economic map of the century...

This may have a completely different meaning from the Euro’s challenge to the US dollar’s hegemony and its final disastrous defeat 20 years ago. In the end, the dollar, which is stronger and has a more solid underlying framework, defeated the fatally wounded euro. But today, the power struggle in the global monetary system is more accompanied by the transformation of the world economic pattern.

The real trend across the globe is that we are moving from a unipolar world to a multipolar world, and at the same time the confrontation between old and new forces and interest groups is becoming more and more apparent. In the economic field, the Western developed economies represented by the "Group of Seven + Australia" and the emerging economies represented by the "BRICS+" are facing a new balance between resource allocation and interests.

Not long ago, the "World Economic Outlook Report" released by the International Monetary Fund showed that in terms of purchasing power parity, as of October 2022, the share of the BRICs in global GDP has surpassed that of the G7.

Some experts say that while global de-dollarization efforts may not quickly replace the dollar with another dominant currency, they could open up other options to allow non-dollar trade transactions, efforts that are further weakening the Western-dominated system.

While the U.S. dollar is expected to remain dominant for some time, increasing bilateral payment routes and the development of advanced technologies such as digital currencies are expected to gradually erode and shake the U.S. dollar’s foundations.

Throughout the history of human currency, it has taken 115 years for the pound to go from its heyday to its complete failure, and it has been nearly a hundred years since the U.S. dollar replaced the hegemony of the pound. Accelerating the build-up, the day when the US dollar will fall from the throne may not be far away...