Diplomatic Foreign Policy Solutions

The Fall of US Dollar Dominance

The dollar's dominance on the world stage was originally started with the Petrodollar in the 1970s. We made agreements that the oil trade would be settled in USD, specifically with Saudi Arabia. Since all nations need oil and a majority of transactions were settled in USD, it became the reserve currency throughout most of the world. This meant countries were enticed to purchase and hold USD.

Over the last few decades, instead of relying on diplomacy, the US has imposed sanctions as a tool of war. Sanctions often don't hurt the leaders of a country or individuals sanctioned, they hurt the people of the country. By overutilizing sanctions, the US has fomented hatred towards the collective West and the US, in particular.

This led to the formation of BRICS, originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa with several other countries already added and more pending applications. They have come into this alliance to settle trade in their own currencies, ditching USD as much as they can. This has removed our 'go to' tool of sanctions from the conversation. We can no longer demand compliance by weaponizing sanctions. We did this to ourselves through failed foreign policy.

How Tariffs Hurt American Consumers

Tariffs are meant to be an action of last resort to protect American industry. Let's say we manufacture Widgets in the US and they are sold for $10. A foreign company copies our Widgets and starts flooding our market with $9 Widgets. In order to protect our Widget industry, we could impose tariffs on imported Widgets. They would be in place until our industry can reduce costs or innovate to be competitive in the market. To be clear: The consumer pays the tariff, not the producer in the foreign country. The problem comes when tariffs are used to shield our corporations from ever having to reduce costs or innovate. When this happens the consumer is just stuck with higher prices for American or foreign Widgets.

Regime Change Wars

The United States has promoted regime change through direct war, military support for opposing factions, direct covert overthrow, and (yes, I'll say it) election interference in the global south, the middle east and eastern Europe. By choosing these actions instead of diplomacy, we have destabilized entire regions and created countless enemies. The majority of these actions have been to steal resources on behalf of international corporations, not for our own 'security'. The world has been watching and this has led to even more applications to join BRICS. We are entering a multi-polar world, and we need to adjust accordingly.

The Immigration Crisis

The refuges who are flooding our borders are often coming from countries that we have destabilized. Being angry at immigrants instead of the system that created the problem is narrow sighted. Additionally, neither party wants to 'fix the border' since their donors benefit from cheap undocumented labor and it helps to suppress wages for all Americans. Note that border crossings really ramped up during the 'summer of labor' just as Americans were standing up and demanding to be treated and paid fairly post-Covid. It is interesting timing.