Paul Blustein, "King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency" (Yale UP, 2025)

About this episode

Paul Blustein discusses the history and future of the U.S. dollar as the world's dominant currency.

The U.S. dollar is the world’s most important currency. Trade is priced in dollars, the world’s central banks keep U.S. dollars in reserve, some places–including my home of Hong Kong, peg their currencies to the dollar. But what explains the U.S. dollar’s success? And why have some challengers, like the Japanese yen or the Chinese yuan, failed to gain traction? Paul Blustein, author of King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency, joins us on the show today; the book was released last year, and is now in paperback. In his book, Paul talks about how the U.S. dollar got to where it is today and punctures some of the myths surrounding dollar dominance–like the idea that the “petrodollar” made a difference. Paul is a senior associate with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also the author of several critically acclaimed books about global economic affairs. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he spent much of his career as a reporter at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. A programming note: we…

People in this episode

Host: Nicholas Gordon

Guest: Paul Blustein

Topics covered

• U.S. dollar
• currency dominance
• global economics
• trade
• central banks
• economic history

Keywords

• U.S. dollar
• currency
• global economy
• Paul Blustein
• King Dollar
• economic affairs
• trade pricing
• central banks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal

Books & works: King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency

Places: U.S., Hong Kong, Iran

More episodes of Asian Review of Books

• Robert Templer, "The Shah's Party: And the Iranian Revolution That Followed (Hurst, 2026) · June 11, 2026 · 44 min
• Homa Katouzian, "Iran and the Revolution: A History" (Yale UP, 2026) · June 4, 2026 · 1h 2m
• Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025) · May 28, 2026 · 43 min
• Evelyn Iritani, "Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II" (FSG, 2026) · May 21, 2026 · 53 min
• Fyodor Tertitskiy, "Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea" (Hurst, 2026) · May 14, 2026 · 35 min
• Julia Stephens, "Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire" (Princeton UP, 2025) · May 7, 2026 · 45 min