RUSSIA CAVES ON YUAN PUSH AS US SANCTIONS CRUSH THE BRICS DE-DOLLARIZATION FANTASY
Russia has effectively abandoned its years-long effort to dump the U.S. dollar and settle trade in China’s yuan, according to a new Bloomberg report. The yuan’s share of Russian export payments has been cut in half this year, falling to just 22 percent from a mid-2024 peak of nearly half.
Sanctions widened in 2024 started the process. Chinese banks, fearing U.S. secondary sanctions, began freezing payments and cutting off cooperation with Russian counterparties.
The retreat accelerated this year under President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who enforced the restrictions hard. Russian exporters have now shifted heavily to the ruble, receiving 69 percent of payments from Asian trading partners in their own currency.
The experiment was supposed to prove that a multipolar world could break free of the dollar. Instead it exposed the limits of that idea.
Beijing never fully opened its financial system, Chinese banks prioritized access to the dollar system over Moscow’s needs, and the yuan’s share of global payments has slid back to pre-war levels. Russia still needs hard currency for critical imports and reserves; the yuan could not deliver it at scale once Washington applied real pressure.
So much for the BRICS dream of a post-dollar order. American sanctions still work, the dollar still dominates trade and finance, and partners who bet against it have been forced to reverse course.