dollar

CARACAS, Venezuela – “Are you paying with bolivars or foreing currency?”

Almost immediately after the U.S. announced the return of international sanctions on Iran on Sunday, the Iranian rial fell to record lows against the U.S. dollar, Radio Farda reported on Monday.

China’s state-run Global Times on Friday applauded the launch of a European system to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, pleased by the damage it could inflict upon U.S. sanctions against China, Venezuela, North Korea, and other countries.

The latest evidence that President Donald Trump’s trade war is not the disaster “experts” predicted came via the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday: investors are moving their money into the United States as Trump’s aggressive policies destabilize competing markets.

One of the leading figures in Nicolás Maduro’s socialist regime in Venezuela has claimed that the U.S. dollar “does not exist” and has no real financial worth.

Trumps comments on the dollar do not contradict Mnuchin’s. In fact, they reflect the same view that U.S. economy is picking up steam.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin caught markets off guard this week by telling the truth about the dollar.

“I think that the U.S. currency has been the most attractive currency to be in for very, very long periods of time,” Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin said during his confirmation hearings on Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the United Nations in New York on Friday to discuss more sanctions relief for Iran, which has complained the benefits promised in President Obama’s nuclear deal are arriving too slowly.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering more concessions to Iran, possibly including the Treasury Department issuing a license that would “permit offshore financial institutions to access dollars for foreign currency trades in support of legitimate business with Iran, a practice that is currently illegal,” as the Associated Press describes it.

In approving the Chinese yuan as a 10.92 percent participant as a reserve currency in the global basket, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that China’s inclusion could push up interest rates.

The rapid and steady decline of Venezuela’s national currency, the Bolívar, is forcing a growing number of businesses to do trade only in American dollars, freezing out Venezuelan citizens from buying cars, renting apartments, or boarding flights offered by businesses that refuse their currency even when they can muster an equivalent amount of retail prices in Bolívars.