De-Dollarization Is Inevitable. The World Isn’t Prepared
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In late May, yields on U.S. Treasury bonds jumped to their highest level since 2023, after the House of Representatives passed sweeping tax cuts as part of President Donald Trump’s proposed budget. The higher effective interest rate on U.S. government borrowing reflected investors’ concerns over the fiscal impact of the bill, which if passed by the Senate and signed into law would add $3.8 trillion to the federal debt—currently at $36.2 trillion—over the coming decade, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The convulsions in the U.S. bond market represent more than a momentary financial hiccup. They signal the early tremors of what JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon called an impending “crack in the bond market” that could set off a potentially catastrophic realignment in the global economic order. As yields on long-term U.S. government debt surge past 5 percent, the international community is beginning to face the uncomfortable reality that the world’s hegemon is galloping toward a sovereign debt crisis with no clear resolution in sight.
Unlike previous sovereign debt crises that afflicted peripheral economies or even major European nations, however, the emerging U.S. fiscal crisis threatens the very foundation of the post-Bretton Woods international monetary system. Hanging in the balance are the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency, the Treasury market’s function as the world’s safe haven and the United States’ capacity to serve as the consumer of last resort. The implications extend to every central bank, sovereign wealth fund and international institution that has built its foundations on the assumption of U.S. fiscal stability.
Global Stakes and Contagion Mechanisms
The international ramifications of a U.S. fiscal crisis would dwarf any financial contagion witnessed in modern history. U.S. Treasury bonds serve multiple critical functions in the global financial system. They are the primary reserve asset for central banks, the preferred collateral for international transactions and the benchmark “risk-free” rate against which all other assets are priced. Approximately $9 trillion in Treasuries are held by foreign governments and investors, with almost a third of that sum being held by just three countries—Japan, the U.K. and China—alone.
A sustained loss of confidence in U.S. fiscal management would trigger a cascade of consequences. Should the price of Treasuries, which moves inversely to yields, fall precipitously, central banks around the world would face massive paper losses on their reserve holdings, potentially destabilizing their own currencies. The global banking system, which relies on Treasuries as high-quality collateral, would experience a severe liquidity crunch. Emerging markets, whose debt is often priced at a premium over U.S. Treasuries, would see borrowing costs skyrocket regardless of their own fiscal prudence.
The most troubling aspect of the United States’ fiscal trajectory is the apparent inability of its political system to correct course.
The geopolitical implications are equally profound. A fiscally weakened United States would struggle to maintain its global military commitments, creating power vacuums that rival powers would eagerly fill. The dollar’s weaponization through sanctions—a key tool of U.S. foreign policy—would lose its potency, as countries accelerate efforts to build alternative payment systems. Already, China’s experiments with “digital yuan” cross-border settlements and expansion of bilateral currency swap agreements signal a world preparing for reduced dollar dependence.
Why This Time Is Different
Predictions of the dollar’s demise have circulated for decades, from the 1970s stagflation crisis through the 2008 global financial crisis. Each time, the dollar emerged stronger, benefiting from what Barry Eichengreen called its “exorbitant privilege”—the U.S. government’s ability to borrow in its own currency at preferential rates while other nations hold dollars as reserves. Critics sounding alarm bells about U.S. fiscal profligacy have consistently been proven wrong. So why should anyone believe this time is different?
The answer lies in the unprecedented confluence of factors that distinguish today’s crisis from previous episodes. When earlier predictions of dollar decline were made, U.S. debt-to-GDP ratios were a fraction of today’s levels—under 40 percent in the 1970s and around 65 percent before the 2008 crisis. Currently, that figure sits at 121 percent, or double the 60 percent benchmark widely considered to be fiscally sustainable. More critically, in these earlier periods, the U.S. political system was still capable of bipartisan compromise on fiscal matters. The Social Security reform passed in 1983 and budget agreements negotiated in the 1990s demonstrated that U.S. democracy could still make hard choices when necessary.
Today’s political landscape offers no such hope. The hyper-partisanship that has paralyzed Washington shows no signs of abating. Primary systems that punish fiscal moderation and reward fiscal profligacy have created political incentives that virtually guarantee continued deterioration. Meanwhile, technological alternatives to the dollar system that didn’t exist during previous crises are rapidly maturing, from China’s digital yuan trials with trading partners to sophisticated currency swap networks. Countries seeking to insulate themselves from U.S. financial sanctions are actively building the infrastructure for a post-dollar world.
Perhaps most importantly, the global context has fundamentally shifted. Other major economies face their own severe fiscal pressures, limiting their ability to serve as stabilizers. Japan carries a staggering 250 percent debt-to-GDP ratio and is beginning to buckle under the pressure of its crushing debt. European nations, already struggling with high debt levels, now confront the need for dramatic increases in defense spending as U.S. security guarantees become unreliable. Meeting NATO’s target of 2 percent of GDP dedicated to defense spending would require European members to find tens of billions of additional euros annually, at a time when many are already running significant deficits. Worse still, the alliance is now close to agreeing to the Trump administration’s demand that it raise the defense spending target to 5 percent of GDP. Even China is grappling with a local government debt crisis and a property sector meltdown that threatens its financial stability. When everyone is fiscally stretched, the coordination needed to manage a crisis becomes nearly impossible.
The Anatomy of an Unprecedented Crisis
The mechanics of the United States’ fiscal deterioration are straightforward but devastating. The feedback loop now threatening to take hold follows a familiar pattern from previous sovereign debt crises elsewhere in the world, albeit at an unprecedented scale. As markets lose confidence in a country’s fiscal sustainability, they demand higher yields to compensate for the greater risk they are taking in buying sovereign debt. These higher borrowing costs worsen the nation’s fiscal position, further eroding investor confidence and driving yields higher still. In emerging markets, this spiral typically ends with intervention by the International Monetary Fund and painful structural adjustment. For the world’s largest economy and reserve currency issuer, no such external stabilizer exists.
What further distinguishes the U.S. case from historical precedents is the confluence of multiple massive fiscal time bombs. The Social Security pension program’s trust fund will run dry in 2033, after which benefit cuts of approximately 20 percent—considered the “third rail” of U.S. politics—automatically kick in. The Medicare low-income health insurance program confronts similar pressures three years thereafter, in 2036. Added to this is the fact that, when these crises hit, the U.S. can expect to be spending around $2 trillion annually on interest payments alone at current projections.
These entitlement crises are driven by demographic realities that are largely irreversible—an aging population with fewer workers supporting each retiree. Compounding this challenge, the U.S. now relies on immigration as the primary driver of population growth. However, amid U.S. political dysfunction, societal polarization and the Trump administration’s overtly xenophobic policies, the country is likely to be increasingly unattractive to potential immigrants, meaning it will be severing this demographic lifeline just when it’s needed most. Should immigration continue to decline, the entitlement math becomes even more catastrophic.
Near-Term Triggers and Warning Signs
While the entitlement crises of 2033-2036 represent structural breaking points, several near-term developments could trigger a crisis much sooner. As evidenced by last month’s tremors, the Treasury market is already showing signs of stress. Weak auctions, in which demand barely covers the debt on offer and yields spike to attract sufficient buyers, have become more frequent. The return of “bond vigilantes,” who sell off their Treasury holdings to register their disapproval of U.S. fiscal policy, could begin forcing yields sharply higher, requiring primary dealers—banks and securities brokers that buy Treasuries directly from the Fed to sell on to individual investors—to absorb an unusually large share.
The psychological threshold of 5 percent yields on 10-year Treasuries has already been breached multiple times. Should yields settle above 6 percent—a level last seen in the runup to the 2008 financial crisis—the feedback loop between higher borrowing costs and deteriorating fiscal metrics could quickly become self-reinforcing.
Credit-rating agencies have grown increasingly vocal in their warnings. Standard & Poor’s already downgraded U.S. debt from its AAA rating back in 2011, with Fitch following suit in 2023. Moody’s completed the trifecta last month, stripping the U.S. of its last AAA rating. With all three major agencies now rating U.S. debt below perfect, forced selling by institutions mandated to own only AAA-rated securities, such as pension funds and public employee unions, has already begun. More ominously, the cost of insuring against U.S. default through credit default swaps has been rising to levels that suggest markets are beginning to price in previously unthinkable scenarios. U.S. sovereign risk is now comparable to countries with BBB+ ratings like Italy and Greece, a striking disconnect from official ratings that reveals how markets truly assess U.S. fiscal sustainability.
The Political Economy of Inaction
The most troubling aspect of the United States’ fiscal trajectory is the apparent inability of its political system to correct course. Any serious fiscal consolidation would require both significant tax increases and entitlement reform, a combination that has become politically radioactive. The last serious attempt at such a fiscal grand bargain came in 2011, during the administration of then-President Barack Obama, and it failed. Since then, both parties have retreated to their respective corners, with Republicans refusing to countenance tax increases and Democrats protecting entitlement programs from any meaningful reform.
The international community must therefore confront an uncomfortable truth: There is no foreseeable political path to U.S. fiscal sustainability. The world’s economic architecture remains anchored to a hegemon that lacks the political capacity for fiscal self-correction. This recognition should prompt urgent consideration of how to manage an orderly transition away from dollar dependence rather than awaiting an inevitable and chaotic collapse.
False Hopes and Magical Thinking
In the face of these daunting fiscal realities, many market participants cling to scenarios that might avert catastrophe. Chief among these is the hope for a tech-driven productivity boom that could generate enough growth to outrun the debt spiral. Yet even if artificial intelligence, or AI, delivers on its most optimistic promises, the timeline for such transformation extends well beyond the 2033-2036 entitlement crisis window.
More troublingly, mounting evidence suggests the AI revolution may itself be a bubble. And even if it does eventually pay dividends, the historical precedents of previous “frontier” technologies—like railroads, automobiles and the dotcom bubble—suggest there will be massive over-investment, with only a few firms surviving into the mature phase of adoption. Should the current AI investment mania collapse, taking trillions of dollars in market capitalization with it, the fiscal crisis would accelerate dramatically just when the economy could least afford another shock.
The warning signs of U.S. fiscal instability are multiplying. Yet the global financial architecture remains as dollar-dependent as ever, creating a dangerous mismatch between emerging risks and institutional preparedness.
Others point to the possibility of a new Plaza Accord-style international agreement to manage currency adjustments in ways that would provide a boost to the U.S. economy, particularly its manufacturing sector. But the original 1985 Plaza Accord emerged from a very different world—one with clear U.S. leadership, cooperative allies and shared interests in stability. Today’s fragmented, multipolar environment offers no such foundation for coordination.
Finally, the notion that the Federal Reserve could simply monetize the debt through unlimited money-printing ignores both the inflationary consequences of doing so and the damage it would do to the dollar’s reserve status. The Bank of Japan’s decades-long experiment with monetary expansion has only been possible because of Japan’s unique economic characteristics—high domestic savings, persistent deflation and current account surpluses—none of which apply to the United States.
Toward Managed De-Dollarization
The choice facing the international community is not whether to end the dollar’s privileged position but whether that end comes through careful preparation or catastrophic crisis. History offers some guidance—the pound sterling’s decline from premier reserve currency status took several decades and was managed without systemic collapse. However, that transition benefited from an obvious successor currency in the dollar and a cooperative relationship between the U.K. and U.S. as the declining and rising powers, respectively. Today’s interconnected financial system, the scale of dollar dependence and the absence of a clear alternative all suggest we may not have the luxury of such a gradual, orderly transition.
The challenges to de-dollarization remain formidable. Network effects make the dollar’s dominance self-reinforcing—everyone uses dollars because everyone else uses dollars. No alternative currency matches the depth and liquidity of U.S. Treasury markets. The euro suffers from structural flaws exposed during the sovereign debt crisis of the 2010s. The yuan remains hobbled by capital controls and political risk. Yet these very challenges make preparation more urgent, not less.
Previous attempts at creating dollar alternatives have foundered on precisely these obstacles. The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights—based on a basket of currencies and used as a unit of account and settlement among its member states—never achieved critical mass since their introduction in 1969, because they offered no advantages over dollars for most transactions. Regional payment systems like the Asian Clearing Union remained marginal because they couldn’t match the dollar’s convenience and acceptability. But multiple factors suggest the next attempts might succeed where others failed.
First, digital currency technology enables instantaneous, low-cost multicurrency transactions that weren’t possible in previous eras. Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, could enable efficient settlement systems that reduce reliance on dollar intermediation. China’s digital yuan trials demonstrate the potential for technology to accelerate monetary transformation, particularly as countries seek to insulate themselves from U.S. financial sanctions. A basket-based digital settlement system, perhaps administered by the IMF or a new international institution, could provide stability while reducing single-currency dependence.
Second, the sheer scale of countries now seeking alternatives to the dollar creates momentum that didn’t exist before. The BRICS nations, representing 40 percent of the world’s population and over a third of global GDP, are actively developing alternative payment mechanisms. Their New Development Bank, while still small, provides a template for non-dollar development finance. As more countries join these initiatives, network effects could begin working against the dollar rather than for it.
Third, the private sector is increasingly hedging against dollar risk. Major commodity traders are experimenting with yuan-denominated contracts. Corporate treasurers are developing multi-currency cash-management systems. All these micro-level adaptations could help accelerate macro-level change when crisis hits by providing a number of alternatives to the status quo.
For U.S. allies, this transition presents acute dilemmas. Countries like Japan, South Korea and the European NATO members must balance their security dependence on Washington with the need to protect their economic interests from U.S. fiscal instability. This may require uncomfortable conversations about burden-sharing and the development of regional security arrangements that could fill the vacuum left behind as the U.S. military’s capacity diminishes. With the Trump administration already undermining confidence in Washington’s security commitments, this task becomes all the more urgent.
The Path Forward
The international community stands at a critical juncture. The warning signs of U.S. fiscal instability are multiplying, from debt-ratings downgrades to surging yields on Treasuries. Yet the global financial architecture remains as dollar-dependent as ever, creating a dangerous mismatch between emerging risks and institutional preparedness.
Policymakers worldwide must begin not just planning for a post-dollar monetary order but actively constructing one. This doesn’t require abandoning the dollar immediately or indulging in wishful thinking about its demise. Rather, it demands pragmatic preparation for a transition that appears increasingly inevitable. Central banks, which are diversifying their reserves into gold at the fastest pace in decades, should do so even more aggressively. Financial institutions should stress-test for dollar disruption scenarios. International bodies should accelerate work on alternative payment and settlement mechanisms.
This transition need not be disorderly. With sufficient foresight and cooperation, the world could evolve toward a more balanced, multipolar monetary system that actually enhances stability. But this requires acknowledging that the current trajectory is unsustainable and that waiting for U.S. political dysfunction to self-correct is a recipe for disaster.
The question now is whether the international community will act on this recognition or continue moving toward a preventable catastrophe. The bond market is already beginning to vote with its feet. The rest of the world would be wise to follow suit—not in panic, but in prudent preparation for a new monetary order.
Nicholas Creel is an associate professor of business law and ethics at Georgia College & State University.