Beijing and Moscow have rarely had more reasons to rue the dollar’s global dominance. Yet changing the status quo will be difficult, and recent efforts to do so have yielded little. The dollar isn’t only the primary reserve currency held by other central banks. It is also ubiquitous in trade and international capital markets, making it crucial to the stability of emerging economies. Last year a soaring dollar rattled the developing world by making dollar debt more expensive for foreign borrowers to service.

Source: Wall Street Journal January 20, 2019 14:25 UTC