Sanctions on Russia have forced countries to shift to other currencies, the billionaire says
The United States has “overplayed” its hand in “weaponizing” the dollar with sanctions, pushing more countries around the world to slash transactions using the currency, Elon Mask has warned.
“You're now seeing a lot of countries de-dollar their transactions because we’ve forced it. And this goes beyond even Russia, China, and Iran,” the owner of X (formerly Twitter) said during a Twitter Spaces session hosted by American entrepreneur David Sachs on Monday.
Musk highlighted a shift to trade in national currencies, especially among the BRICS nations, adding that it was not a choice made by these countries, but rather a necessity forced upon them by Ukraine-related Western sanctions against Moscow.
“Countries like Brazil or India still want to transact with Russia. They can’t do it with dollars, so we've forced them to de-dollarize their transactions, thus weakening the strength of the dollar in the world,” he explained.
The weaponization of the greenback has pushed many nations to look for alternatives, after sanctions effectively cut Russia off from the Western financial system.....more here
https://www.rt.com/business/585713-musk-dollar-weaponization-russia/
China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year. Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?
"The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.
Balancing the Mineral Market
"The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.
In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth ...
The Israeli regime has reportedly signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to sway American public opinion as part of attempts to launder the occupying entity’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the multimillion-dollar campaign aimed to reshape US public opinion, both online and offline, through coordinated influence operations combining digital marketing, AI, geotagging, and religious messaging.
The contracts, signed between the Israeli regime and firms linked to US President Donald Trump, reveal a “hasbara [propaganda] campaign” and schemes to target millions of US churchgoers, deploy bots, hire influencers, and try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel.
The largest contract, worth $6 million, was signed with Clock Tower X, owned by Trump’s former digital campaign chief Brad Parscale, to produce and distribute roughly 100 core pieces of pro-Israel content per month and thousands......