The US dollar is the queen of currencies. Around 80 percent of all goods traded across borders are invoiced and paid in dollars. This means the international real economy runs largely on the dollar, even where no American business is involved. In the financial economy, dollar dominance is starker still: nearly 90 percent of foreign exchange trades involve the US currency. The financial economy, moreover, dwarfs the real one. Foreign exchange trading amounts to roughly $7.5 trillion every day, that is, about a quarter of annual global trade. Put simply, the dollar reigns supreme over the empire of financialized globalization.

Issuing the queen of currencies is a privilege—or so it is said. Americans traveling abroad enjoy how much local currency their dollars buy. US firms trading across the globe can do so without worrying about exchange rate risk. The United States as a whole can afford to consume much more goods than it produces, because foreign countries are eager to sell them in exchange for company shares, US government debt, and dollar cash. The unending demand for such claims on the US economy allows both the US government and businesses to borrow cheaply and plentifully around the globe.

Just as importantly, the United States has leveraged the dollar’s global dimension to wield geopolitical power. Since the end of the Cold War, an ever-growing web of US dollar-based sanctions against individuals, companies, or indeed entire nations has emerged. Moreover, since the early 2000s, the US has also begun to employ its queen-of-currencies status to fight tax evasion and corporate crime beyond its borders. That is, the US dollar has been weaponized to force allies (for instance Germany) and adversaries (the usual suspects such as Iran, Russia or North Korea) into aligning with US interests or else be cut off from the US dollar system. Since George W. Bush’s Patriot Act of 2001, all US governments have made ample use of this power.

And yet, President Trump and his administration beg to differ. Issuing the world’s most powerful currency, they argue, is a burden rather than a privilege, and one they are no longer willing to bear alone. Their main contention with the US dollar’s international role stems from its effect on the domestic real economy. High global demand for the US dollar strengthens its value, making US products more expensive than those of other countries. A strong US dollar stands in the way of one of Trump’s central ambitions: reviving American manufacturing. Other shortcomings of US manufacturers—that their cars are too large for European streets or consume too much gasoline, for example—seem to play no role in their thinking; nor does the fact that US financial and digital services are accruing a surplus.