Category Archives: the dollar

Is a Resource Curse Crowding Out US Renewable Energy?

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April 19, 2026 — The Natural Resource Curse [NRC] refers to negative effects that a booming commodity sector can have on a country’s overall economic growth.  (Commodities are defined to include oil and natural gas, minerals, and often agriculture.) Many oil-rich producers in the Mideast and Africa, for example, have failed to achieve the prosperity that some resource-poor rocky islands and peninsulas in East Asia have.

Some  are now applying the idea of a NRC to the US, which is said to be acting like a petrostate in that a revival of the oil and gas sector is crowding out technologically advanced manufacturers of renewable energy equipment. read more

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No Mar-a-Lago Accord

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March 23, 2025 — What is to be made of proposals for a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” coming from some Trump devotees, notably Stephen Miran?  (He is the new Chair of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.)

Sometime during the next 3 years and 10 months, Trump could well find some event that he will want to trumpet under the name of his Florida residence.   But the Mar-a-Lago Accord about which people are talking, regarding the dollar, doesn’t stand a chance.

  1. The return of international coordination?

The proposal comprises an effort, coordinated among large countries, to intervene to depreciate the dollar, in hopes of improving the US trade balance. That much resembles the successful 1985 Plaza Accord, which is said to be its inspiration.
One could imagine a sensible proposal for concerted intervention to bring down the dollar from its height, coordinated with American steps to cut its budget deficit and steps by Germany and China to increase their budget deficits, thus helping to address the fundamental causes of the international trade imbalances. But this is not that. read more

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Trump threatens tariffs against a BRICs chimera

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December 20, 2024 — In 2023, the leaders of Brazil and other BRICS countries – Russia, India, China, and South Africa – began to discuss the creation of a new common currency.   At a BRICS summit meeting two months ago, they continued to talk up the currency proposal.  New members as of this year, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates would presumably also be included.

The idea is to encourage a shift in the global monetary system away from dominance of the dollar, which has held sway the last 75 years.  This has provoked President-elect Donald Trump.  On November 30, 2024, he reiterated a warning to the BRICS that he required “a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty US Dollar, or they will face 100% Tariffs.” read more

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