When country A wants to import goods from country B, they can use country B’s currency to do so. In order to have a supply of country B’s currency to trade, country B must also be importing goods from country A. However, this only works when the imports/exports between country A and B are exactly equal and as you might imagine that is never the case. One of the countries will inevitably run out of supply of the other’s currency.
Thus there is a global need for an intermediary currency which holds equal value for both countries. For many hundreds of years that currency was gold. As the value of trade grew and grew as technology progressed it eventually far outstripped the global supplies and quantities of gold and other precious metals, so an alternative was needed.
That alternative was the US Dollar. Technically, USD became that currency even before gold was ousted because the value of USD was once directly pegged to that of gold, so countries often used USD as a placeholder for gold when trading. It continued even after that relationship was broken because A) America has a juggernaut of an economy, then worth up to 50% of global GDP and even today it is about 25% of global GDP, thus nearly every country in the world already does significant levels of trade with the US. Also, B) A more viable alternative doesn’t exist. USD has a predictable and trustworthy value and a vast supply available for everyone to use.
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