The best way to understand the problem is an example:
Say you live in a fantasy kingdom that has the only supply of fairy dust in the whole world.
Fairy dust is like oil, or in our world the “Petro-dollar”
Every other kingdom uses fairy dust for their furnaces to make magical items, also to trade as currency.
Your Kingdom doesn’t really make anything except for fairy dust, so everyone in your kingdom relies on the money the government makes from selling and trading it to survive.
Suddenly, another kingdom starts making the fairy dust, and tells its neighbors they want to trade using goblin ears. This new kingdom suddenly puts your kingdom in jeopardy of going bankrupt, if the other nations all agree to buy the dust and trade in goblin ears, effectively shutting down your entire kingdoms economy!
So you go to your neighbors and make a deal that they won’t ever trade in goblin ears, so you still control a majority of the trade.
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