This is apropos two back-to-back letters to the Editor titled ‘How Trump pushed the world towards Beijing’ carried by the newspaper on Saturday and yesterday.
This shift soon extended into the financial realm. European policymakers began openly discussing the risks of overexposure to US Treasury holdings and the vulnerability created by dollar-dominated trade and settlement systems. This trend has taken a new political meaning in an environment where financial access is increasingly treated as a strategic weapon.
At the same time, the BRICS bloc—now expanded to include major energy producers and regional powers—has accelerated efforts to build alternative mechanisms for trade settlement, development finance, and cross-border investment that bypass traditional Western-controlled institutions.
Local-currency trade arrangements, new development banks, and parallel payment systems are no longer theoretical exercises; they are active projects driven by a shared desire to reduce vulnerability to American financial leverage.
In this environment, China has not needed to aggressively recruit allies. Its role as the central node of global manufacturing, trade, and infrastructure has done much of the work.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
The writer is a former Press Secretary to the President, An ex-Press Minister at Embassy of Pakistan to France, a former MD, SRBC Macomb, Detroit, Michigan
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