Join Atlantic Council leadership and experts for a closed-door roundtable discussion on the state of the dollar and its far-reaching implications for the global economy. A light breakfast will be provided for attendees.

The US dollar has served as the world’s leading reserve currency since before World War II. Today, the dollar represents 58 percent of the value of foreign reserve holdings worldwide. The euro, the second-most-used currency, comprises only 21 percent of foreign reserve holdings. But in recent years, and especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Group of Seven (G7)’s subsequent escalation in the use of financial sanctions, a range of countries have been increasingly signaling their intention to diversify away from dollars. But how much is rhetoric and how much is reality?

Over the past twenty-four months, the founding members of BRICS (a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has been actively promoting the use of national currencies in trade and transactions, while China has expanded its alternative cross-border payment system to its trading partners and sought to increase international usage of the renminbi. While these shifts do not immediately threaten the dollar, in the long term, these developments have the potential to disrupt and diminish U.S. and allied influence in key ways, from blunting the effect of sanctions on adversaries like Russia and China to causing more financial instability in the US.