Take the Marshall Plan for example. The US gave 13 billion dollars to European nations to rebuild their cities. But what is meant by 13 billion dollars? Where does the money come from? Is it paid in gold? Do the countries receive the money, then buy resources with the money? What happens when enormous sums of money is lent, and then the lending country inflates or deflates their currency?
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Often such “gifts” aren’t just a pile of cold, hard cash that the nation can do anything they want with. That isn’t as politically advantageous as it would relinquish control of what that money can be spent on, and would likely be spent in ways that don’t particularly benefit the country giving it.
Instead what would often happen is the donating country would provide a certain amount of funds for use in purchasing certain kinds of products from local companies. So for example the United States might provide Ukraine with a budgeted amount of money to spend on purchasing weapons from US-based weapons manufacturers. That budget would be paid out by the US government itself, not Ukraine, so there isn’t really a bank account sitting around with that money in it (other than the US government general fund). The money would ultimately come from US taxpayers of course.
Since the country being gifted the funds isn’t directly involved it doesn’t really matter what happens to their local currency. It is much more politically palatable to do things this way as well because it can be seen as reinvesting in the local economy.
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