Two small but critically important pieces of news in the past few weeks are early indicators that the global economic order, centred on the primacy of the dollar, is slowly coming apart – bringing the threat of radically worsened instability.
First, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister said the Gulf kingdom had “no objection” to selling its oil in a currency other than dollars. Saudi has made similar noises before, but this latest suggestion comes after Chinese president Xi Jinping urged Gulf countries to take up the yuan for the settlement of oil and gas trades with China at the first China-Arab States Summit, hosted with great pomp and ceremony by Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh last month.
As the world’s largest crude oil exporter, and (until recently) a lynchpin of US strategy in the Middle East, any such moves by Saudi Arabia would be big news. It would mean the world’s first and second largest oil exporters – Saudi and Russia – would no longer be looking to trade that oil solely in dollars.
