Recent efforts by emerging market countries – led by China – to move away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency are based on the fear that the US is increasingly using the dollar and its prevailing reserve system as a weapon against other states. Countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), some ASEAN nations, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are now also pushing to use local currencies in trade.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva formulated these countries’ unease with the dominance of the USD as the standard of the international monetary system in the following way: “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar. Why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies? Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?”
However, the US dollar’s relevance has declined over the past decades.