Why does all Global Trade happen in the USD if the USD is not backed by the gold standard?

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It doesn’t really make sense for countries or unions (e.g. EU) to decide to base their trade of the USD and keep a lot of their foreign reserves as the USD if it isn’t backed by gold. Wouldn’t this just mean that a lot political power is given to the US because they have the ability to arbitrarily set the value of trading currency if it isn’t based of a real-world resource like gold ?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It was not the gold standard. It was global trade negotiation, and while British genius economist John Maynard Keynes was sick and busy, the American Harry Dexter White presented a “filler term” for the to-be-decided central currency which another assumed would be easier to say dollar, then he pushed a fast consensus that left the dollar winning.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/16/331743569/episode-552-the-dollar-at-the-center-of-the-world](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/16/331743569/episode-552-the-dollar-at-the-center-of-the-world)

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