Why Trump Is Killing the Dollar

The two reasons all this is happening right now. They're not pretty.

The only victim in this trade war. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I take no joy in pointing out the obvious: Trump and his technocrats are setting up the U.S. economy to fail, possibly leading to a recession—if not a full-blown depression. Trump, ever the egotist, doesn’t see it coming. Like the mafia friends who helped him bankrupt his casinos, he’s being used by smarter people to carry out something far more calculated.

Here’s the first reason they’re working so hard to seem insane: Thiel and Musk want the world’s reserve currency to be some form of cryptocurrency. Maybe it’s bitcoin. Maybe it’s a so-called sovereign currency issued by each government and instantly interchangeable across borders. Either way, the goal is to bypass the traditional system—no central banks, no SEC, no oversight. Money moves freely, without checks or balances.

The easiest way to tank the dollar is through tariffs. Tariffs of this magnitude and with this theatrically are aimed at one thing: destabilizing our economy. Trump sees tariffs as a simple deal. He thinks that because France taxes U.S. imports, the U.S. should return the favor. In January 2025, France exported $51.2 billion to the U.S., while the U.S. exported $42.9 billion to France. That imbalance looks excessive at first glance, but much of what we import from France is high-value industrial equipment—gas turbines used in aviation, for example. Both countries trade expensive goods. France might sell us more wine than we sell them, and sure, their cheese is better. But is that trade deficit worth escalating into economic warfare?