Comment by HDThoreaun
13 hours ago
If French banks with US presence start banking sanctioned individuals the US would start confiscating their American assets. It’s just not worth it for them. The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
Why does it need to be all French banks? The French government could establish a special class of bank for domestic business, that isn't subject to international pressure except pressure applied to the French government itself. They should be able to find a way that a judge in Europe, living in Europe, paying European taxes to European governments, paying rent to a European landlord, doesn't have to give a shit about what America thinks.
This is a tractable problem, except for the lack of political willpower to create a solution.
Sure, France could in theory create such a domestic bank. But it wouldn't be allowed to connect to any US based financial institutions or transfer funds through networks controlled by those institutions. This would be so limiting as to make it hardly worth the effort. Ultimately I expect that France will just try to wait out the current US administration.
Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies. Your point being?
> The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
The USD is rapidly losing this status, though. The current president's policies has turned the US into an extremely unreliable trade partner, so more and more trades are being done in EUR.
> Yes, and Europe will start confiscating European assets of American companies.
At this point, they should do so. With America weakened and behaving erratically, this is a good time for Europe to assert itself and put America in our place.
If it's a French bank the country of France can tell said bank they must service said customer regardless of the loss of their US assets.
Every country that works at an international level assumes said risks.
I for one am tired of internal national companies playing pick and choose on the best options and ignoring everything else. If the world wants to go multipolar again it's time for corporations to get kicked in the sack.
Sure, they could, but they won’t because the banks business would be fucked and most governments aren’t trying to destroy their domestic businesses.
They might, but if they did they would presumably be prepared to retaliate against US seizures with their own. The only reason the US is able to credibly threaten to seize EU bank assets is because the EU governments are implicitly on board with the entire arrangement. As soon as it's no longer viewed as mutually beneficial it will crumble overnight.
Which is why the way to deal with this is by sanctioning US companies in retaliation. Europe can't shield its own companies from the US, but it can inflict equal pain on US companies.