China’s renewed push to internationalise the yuan could mark a decisive moment in the global monetary order, according to Peter Schiff, Chief Economist and Global Strategist at Europac.com. In a wide-ranging interview with Rick Sanchez, Schiff argued that Beijing’s latest announcements — expanding currency swap agreements, promoting oil trade in yuan, and building a cross-border payments system to rival SWIFT — are not symbolic gestures but part of a long-term strategy to reduce the world’s dependence on the US dollar.
Schiff said China’s move is both logical and inevitable, particularly after years of aggressive US sanctions and what he described as the “weaponisation” of the dollar. By freezing reserves and cutting countries off from the dollar-based financial system, Washington has pushed many nations to actively seek alternatives.
“It’s not just China,” Schiff noted. “Countries all over the world want to divest from dollars — not only because the US keeps printing them to finance massive debts, but also because holding dollars has become a political risk.”
At the heart of Schiff’s argument is the idea that America’s standard of living is deeply tied to the dollar’s reserve currency status. This privilege, he said, allows the US to run trillion-dollar trade and budget deficits, import far more than it produces, and finance a vast military and consumer-driven economy. If that status erodes, the consequences could be severe: a collapsing dollar, soaring inflation, sharply higher interest rates and a painful adjustment for US consumers who rely heavily on imports.
Schiff also pushed back against the notion that the US holds the upper hand because it is the world’s biggest consumer. “That’s backwards,” he said. “Producers have the power, not consumers. China and other emerging markets can consume what they produce. America can’t consume what isn’t produced.” Decades of outsourcing, he added, have left the US dangerously dependent on foreign manufacturing.
Can yuan challenge dollar?
On whether China can truly challenge the dollar, Schiff was clear: the process is already underway. Central banks have been steadily increasing gold reserves while reducing exposure to US Treasuries, making gold — not the dollar — the world’s largest reserve asset.
In Schiff’s view, China could accelerate the shift dramatically by backing the yuan with gold and making it convertible. Pegging the yuan to gold, and eventually aligning the Hong Kong dollar with it, would be “checkmate” for dollar dominance, he argued.
Schiff dismissed concerns about trusting China as the anchor of a new system, asking why the world should trust the US instead. Trade patterns, he said, increasingly favour China, which produces goods that many countries need, while the US mainly offers depreciating IOUs. Infrastructure developments across South America and other regions, designed to bypass US ports, underscore this realignment.
While Schiff acknowledged that the dollar will not disappear overnight, he believes its monopoly is ending. Even a partial loss of reserve status would, he warned, pose a “huge problem” for the United States. The yuan may not fully dethrone the dollar immediately, but according to Schiff, the foundations of a multipolar currency world are already being laid — and the US is far less prepared for that reality than it believes.
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