For nearly a century, the United States dollar has operated on the same principle as a pyramid scheme or a particularly aggressive cult: it only works as long as everyone agrees not to look too closely at the basement. But the lights are being flicked on, and the man with the flashlight is a spray-tanned wrecking ball with a penchant for gold-plated toilets and an utter lack of understanding regarding macroeconomic theory. The news that the dollar looks 'vulnerable' for the first time in decades is less of a shock and more of a long-overdue punchline to a joke the rest of the world has been forced to endure since Bretton Woods.

Donald Trump, the avatar of American id, has proposed a set of policies that would effectively turn the global reserve currency into a volatile memecoin. Between universal tariffs and his transparent desire to treat the Federal Reserve like a personal piggy bank, the former and perhaps future president is threatening to do what decades of Soviet posturing and Chinese industrial expansion couldn't: make the dollar irrelevant. Of course, the Right will tell you this is 'economic nationalism' and a return to strength, while the Left will shriek about the 'end of the rules-based order'—a phrase used exclusively by people who benefit from the fact that the rules were written by their grandfathers on a napkin in New Hampshire. Both sides are, as usual, spectacularly missing the point. The dollar isn't a symbol of American greatness; it’s a collective hallucination backed by a fleet of aircraft carriers and the hope that no one asks for their money back at the same time.

Trump’s fascination with tariffs—proposing a 10% to 20% blanket tax on everything that crosses the border—is the kind of economic logic one expects from a medieval king or a toddler playing Monopoly. He believes he is taxing the foreigners, when in reality, he is simply ensuring that the American consumer pays more for their imported plastic garbage while simultaneously inviting every other nation on Earth to find a new medium of exchange. If you tell your neighbors they can no longer use your driveway, don't be surprised when they decide to pave their own. The vulnerability of the greenback isn't just a technical glitch; it's the inevitable result of a country that has outsourced its brain to the lowest bidder.

Then there is the Federal Reserve. Trump’s open desire to have a 'say' in interest rates is the ultimate ego trip. He views the Fed's independence as a personal slight, an obstacle to the perpetual sugar high of cheap debt he craves. If he succeeds in turning the central bank into a satellite office of the Executive Branch, the dollar’s credibility will evaporate faster than a campaign promise. A currency is only as good as the institutional stability behind it. When that stability is replaced by the whims of a man who thinks the 'late, great Hannibal Lecter' is a real person, the international community tends to start looking for the exit.

But let’s not pretend the alternative—the status quo—is any more dignified. The 'intellectuals' and 'policy experts' who are currently clutching their pearls over the dollar’s decline are the same people who presided over the 2008 collapse and the subsequent decade of printing money to solve problems caused by printing money. They treat the dollar like a sacred relic, yet they’ve debased it through endless fiscal expansion and a refusal to acknowledge that the American empire is in its twilight. The Democrats offer no real solution; they merely want to manage the decline with more decorum and better-worded press releases. They want the dollar to remain the global standard so they can continue to weaponize it through sanctions, oblivious to the fact that when you turn your currency into a bludgeon, eventually people stop wanting to hold it.

We are witnessing the slow-motion car crash of American exceptionalism. The world is tired. They are tired of the petrodollar, tired of the Treasury department’s arrogance, and tired of being tethered to a political system that fluctuates between geriatric paralysis and populist mania. BRICS nations are whispering about alternatives, gold is reaching new highs, and even the most ardent fans of the American experiment are starting to hedge their bets. Whether it’s Trump’s tariffs or the Left’s spendthrift performative governance, the destination is the same. We have reached the point where the world’s most powerful economy is being managed by people who couldn't balance a checkbook if their lives depended on it. The dollar is vulnerable because the country behind it has lost the plot. It turns out you can’t run the world’s reserve currency on a diet of grievance, debt, and delusion. But don’t worry, as the ship goes down, I’m sure we’ll find a way to blame whichever side we didn't vote for, right up until the moment the ink on our bills starts to fade into the gray reality of a post-American world.