Testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission
Panel 4: China’s Pursuit of Leadership in Digital Currency
A Statement by
Martin Chorzempa
Senior Fellow, Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics
Martin, who kindly references my book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin” in his testimony, wisely presents
Finally, Congress should discourage overuse of financial sanctions in a way that might convince
not only pariah states like Venezuela and North Korea, but US allies like the European Union, to
undergo the massive international effort, cost, and inefficiency involved in creating an
alternative, sanctions-proof set of financial infrastructure and currency arrangements. My
colleagues have found that US sanctions have historically only had even partial success at
achieving the US’ foreign policy goals (Hufbauer et al 2009). Overuse of sanctions would
“weaken the international role of the dollar” (Schott 2021) and likely represent a much greater
risk to the dollar’s dominance than any new form of the already digital RMB.
Snippings 