Whether the U.S. dollar will remain the world's reserve currency in the wake of President Donald Trump's trade war was a source of debate on Wednesday at the 2025 TIME100 Summit.
Writer and CNN host Fareed Zakaria, the moderator of a panel on the future of money, asked whether the U.S. dollar’s status is threatened, especially since “currencies are based on trust.”
He and others pointed to the chaotic weeks since Trump’s April 2 announcement of steep taxes on imports on much of the world, some of which he later paused. Within a day, the U.S. dollar fell to a six-month low against the Euro. On Monday, the ICE U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, showed the dollar dipping to its lowest level since March 2022, according to CNBC.
Raymond Dalio, hedge fund manager and founder of Bridgewater Associates, described the tariff war as a “symptom of an underlying monetary problem” and of mass changes happening in the international and domestic order.
“The dynamic has been that we don't produce things well, and China's a big manufacturer,” Dalio said. “We’re at a point that that’s not sustainable.”
Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, CEO and chairman of Circle, a sponsor of the summit, chimed in and said that issues with the U.S. dollar, especially following the 2008-2009 financial crisis, left a space for businesspeople like him to see how they could utilize digital currency in the face of the volatility of traditional monetary systems. Circle is a stablecoin company, and stablecoins are different from more volatile cryptocurrency in that money goes in a reserve account and are designed to hold the value of a U.S. dollar. In that way, he said, stablecoins are a new form of money that could help “drive” the influence of the U.S. dollar in the global economic system.
“Right now, the United States needs to improve competitiveness and demand for dollars. It needs to improve technology competitiveness,” he said.
“I think the question is ‘What is money?” added Dalio. “What is going to be a store-hold of wealth that is going to be exchangeable internationally, recognized internationally?”
U.S. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who represents New York, said, though, that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle need to work together to add a road map for how to engage in cryptocurrency, to deter money laundering, and to ensure consumer protections.
“What Congress must do is get their head out of the sand and do the work to regulate this industry so that we can continue to be the center of the world financial markets, the use of cryptocurrency, the use of blockchain, the use of stable coins,” Gillibrand said.
Allaire suggested the interest in alternative currencies isn’t going to go away amid continued global upheaval.
“What's interesting is that for people around the world, there's an enormous amount of demand for people who want to hold digital dollars,” he said, “They're seen as a stronger alternative to oftentimes even worse fiscal monetary issues in their own countries and regimes.”
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The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including business, health and science, AI, culture, and more.
Speakers for the 2025 TIME100 Summit include human rights advocate Yulia Navalnaya; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; comedian Nikki Glaser; climate justice activist Catherine Colman Flowers; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, and many more, plus a performance by Nicole Scherzinger.
The 2025 TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Circle, Diriyah Company, Prudential Financial, Toyota, Amazon, Absolut, Pfizer, and XPRIZE.