The United States is no longer hiding anything. After tariffs, another lever is being used: currency. Not the dollar as a symbol, but the system that makes it indispensable. The question is no longer “who produces what,” but “who depends on whom”—and how this dependence is created. The monetary relationship, through currency parity, plays this direct and terribly effective role.
The root of the problem lies in the fragmentation of the global economy. There is no longer a cooperative framework, no shared rules: each bloc plays its own game.
Money becomes a relational weapon: a means of creating political debt.
When Washington intervened a few months ago regarding the Argentine peso, it wasn’t simply a matter of ideological affinity. It was about making Argentina dependent. The gesture appeared friendly; it established an asymmetry. Those who support it will be able to make demands.
The same logic applies on July 30, 2026, when the US Treasury intervenes in the yen. “Friendly” support for a friendly country—but the coincidence with bilateral Japanese-American commitments is far from insignificant. The subsequent support for the Korean won confirms the pattern: monetary support is part of a network of accountability.
One detail is striking: the intervention was conducted in euros, not dollars. This choice may betray a fragility in the US yield curve, following Kevin Warsh’s vague remarks on monetary policy. More importantly, it sends a message: the euro is reduced to a mere tool in a strategy that is not its own.
To understand this, one needs the framework of a polarized world: core countries—the United States, China, the Eurozone—and other peripheral countries, bound by explicit or tacit commitments. Between the major zones, exchange rates fluctuate. For the others within each pole, they become rigid. And rigidity breeds dependence: local monetary policy loses its autonomy, financial stability becomes conditional, access to external support becomes strategic—this is the essence of American intervention.
Exchange rates cease to be an outcome and become an object of active management — just like tariffs, alliances or supply chains.
Hence the European question.
The ECB’s rhetoric is defensive: sovereignty, protection, resilience. A eurozone turned inward, anxious not to be attacked, while the American strategy is offensive: to make the dollar indispensable, then consolidate this dependence through targeted interventions.
Can Europe simply defend itself in a world where currency is used for influence? Exchange rates must be considered a tool for projection, a component of a coherent foreign policy strategy. Otherwise, Europe will remain a large market—and an actor subject to the monetary maneuvers of others.
Technical debates obscure the essential point: money has once again become a tool of power. This is once again openly acknowledged.
