Donald Trump’s designs on Venezuela and Greenland have sent shockwaves around the world. Canadian premier Mark Carney said they have created a “rupture in the world order” as political alliances that have held for over 80 years are thrown aside.

And as the United States seeks to carve out a western hemispheric sphere of influence, questions about the dollar’s future as the lynchpin of the global economy are growing louder. Many other parts of the world are switching to green energy sources as renewable energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuels, and countries forced to pay back loans in dollars are eyeing alternative currency options to free themselves from the penalty of fluctuating exchange rates amid unpredictable policy shifts.

As a result, the continued relevance of the petrodollar system—in which oil is traded in dollars and guarantees demand for U.S. currency—may be less than assured.

What Is the Petrodollar System?

The petrodollar system was established in the 1970s following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and is one of the most consequential monetary arrangements in modern history.

In 1944, the Bretton Woods agreement made the U.S. dollar the anchor of the global monetary system, pegged to gold and with other currencies fixed to the dollar. The framework aimed to provide global financial stability following the economic fragmentation of the Second World War and cemented the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

U.S. president Richard Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971 to curb inflation after foreign central banks, increasingly reluctant to hold depreciating dollars, began converting their dollar reserves into gold. The petrodollar system emerged as an alternative means of keeping the dollar as the backbone of international transactions.

The petrodollar system refers to the pact that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states—including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—made with the U.S., agreeing to price oil in dollars and to recycle revenues into U.S. Treasury securities in return for military protection and sales of advanced weaponry.

Andrés Arauz, former Ecuadorian minister and central bank director, told Green Central Banking that ramifications for the global economy were immense. “So oil and gas [are traded in dollars], but then also downstream with all the derivatives, but then also all the chemical elements derived from the oil industry and petrochemical industry. And then likewise, upstream with all the technology and inputs required to extract the oil, [it] created a dollar-denominated value chain with global and international repercussions.”

Arauz also notes that international accounting standards set by institutions like the International Monetary Fund reinforce the system by requiring central banks and organizations to report reserves in dollars, solidifying the greenback as the default unit of account.

For decades, this system delivered guaranteed demand for dollars, recycled oil revenues into safe-haven U.S. debt markets, and provided outsized geopolitical leverage to the U.S. Federal Reserve given the need of other countries to accumulate dollars to conduct global transactions.

Fadhel Kaboub, associate professor in economics at Denison University, explains how this “exorbitant privilege” distorted the global economy in the U.S.’s favour. “All countries operate … within a system where they have to accumulate reserves not in gold anymore but in dollars, and countries that have debt, their debt is denominated in dollars. So that created a locked-in system that gives the U.S. dollar a privilege as the dominant payment system and gives the opportunity to weaponize this system.”

The petrodollar system has also encouraged and amplified U.S. consumption of fossil fuels and its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Kaboub, who is also a member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, says the system has “rewired” the global economy into an extractive model that promotes environmentally destructive industries.

But as decarbonization accelerates and renewable energy displaces fossil fuel value chains, the petro-lynchpin of dollar dominance faces unprecedented strain.

Is the Petrodollar in Decline?

Signs of discontent are increasing, placing the dollar’s decades-long dominance under unprecedented pressure.

Brics countries are discussing new financial mechanisms that will make trading within the bloc easier but may also reduce reliance on existing dollar-dominated channels. Both India and Brazil have denied that linking Brics digital currencies is part of moves towards de-dollarization, but such a move will likely cause concern in the U.S.

Meanwhile, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde made headlines in May 2025 with her blunt assessment that the current global landscape presents a significant opportunity for a “global euro moment,” as investors “unsettled by unpredictable U.S. economic strategies” increasingly reduce their exposure to dollar-denominated assets.

These developments reflect deeper structural shifts. The dollar’s share of global reserves has declined from 71% to 56.3% since 2008, with central banks purchasing over 1,000 tonnes of gold annually for three consecutive years. China has slashed its U.S. Treasury holdings from US$1.3 trillion in 2013 to just $682 billion by November 2025, while simultaneously expanding yuan-based trade across Asia.

This shift was triggered by what Arauz describes as “eroding trust” in U.S. financial systems.

“Perhaps the most serious element that has accelerated this diversification has been the weaponization of the hegemonic banking system,” Arauz said. “[Through] sanctions, through asset freezes, through confiscation of international reserves in many countries … [these] have definitely stirred things up and made countries reflect about the reliance on this previously thought of neutral system that is now, on the other hand a threat, to their national sovereignty and economic policies.”

The climate crisis is also acting as a catalyst. As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, structural strain is placed on the demand for dollars, and the more the U.S. clings to fossil fuel dependency in order to maintain monetary dominance, the deeper the cracks become.

Gulf states have long-term plans to diversify away from oil and reinvest a substantial portion of their oil revenues in green value chains, challenging the core pact which upholds the petrodollar system that U.S. currency dominance has long depended on.

And while economists expect the dollar to remain the primary reserve currency in the near term, it has also been noted that once transitions to a new system are underway, they can happen very quickly. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this month, Jeffry Frieden, political science professor at Columbia University, warned of “an erosion of confidence in the dollar” amid mounting doubts about the safety of U.S. Treasuries as “the most important financial asset in the world”.

‘U.S. Pulling Itself out of the Picture’

The Trump administration’s response to a shift away from the dollar has been to double down on arms sales and fossil fuel infrastructure, what Kaboub calls a “long-term strategic failure” that fundamentally misreads the changing dynamics of global power.

Trump’s recent $142 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia aims to tether Gulf revenues to the dollar through military exports. However, economists like Maya Senussi at Oxford Economics and John Sfakianakis of the Gulf Research Centre warn that financing such deals alongside decarbonization projects will strain GCC budgets, and Bloomberg estimates it will require oil prices to be at least $96 a barrel just to break even. Brent oil prices currently hover around $66.

And in the global south, higher oil prices may inadvertently threaten dollar dominance by exacerbating debt burdens by increasing repayment costs, pushing countries towards cheaper (and greener) energy systems. America’s transition to net fossil fuel exporter status means higher oil prices now strengthen rather than weaken the dollar, creating a triple blow for dollar-indebted countries in Latin America and Africa: higher energy costs, escalating debt servicing and constrained fiscal space.

The very mechanism designed to strengthen dollar ties—expensive arms deals premised on elevated oil prices—accelerates the search for alternatives among countries holding critical transition minerals like lithium, copper and cobalt. This pushes the U.S. further from the green value chains of the future.

“The U.S. is pulling itself out of the picture, it’s divesting from the green technologies and green industries. Which means it’s moving away from its interest in critical minerals,” says Kaboub. “So the remaining big player is China, and it’s a friend of the global south.”

Today, China controls 85-90% of global rare earth processing and offers renewable energy equipment that remains attractive to the GCC despite U.S. and EU tariffs. This is thanks to competitive pricing and comprehensive infrastructure approaches that western competitors have largely failed to match.

Kaboub says that Trump’s minerals-for-security deals, such as in Greenland and elsewhere, may secure short-term market access but erode global trust in U.S. foreign policy, a cornerstone of confidence in the dollar. “The isolated backwards technology bloc is going to be the United States,” he says.

As Lagarde observed, investors increasingly seek “geopolitical assurance in another form” by directing investments toward regions perceived as “dependable security allies”, but this no longer automatically defaults to the U.S. as its government criticizes its one-time allies and jeopardizes the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Yet the petrodollar system faces challenges that extend far beyond the geopolitics of sanctions; climate change has introduced structural pressures making the core foundations of dollar dominance increasingly untenable.

However, given Trump’s bellicose stance on Venezuela and Greenland, there is a risk that American policymakers will not recognize this new reality until it is too late.

This post originally appeared at Green Central Banking and has been republished here with permission.