China and Russia have almost completely abandoned the US dollar in bilateral trade as the push to de-dollarize intensifies

• China and Russia have almost completely phased out the dollar from their bilateral trade.

• More than 90% of trade between the two nations is done with either the yuan or the ruble.

• That “demonstrates almost full de-dollarization of economic ties,” Russia’s prime minister said.

China and Russia have almost completely phased out their use of the US dollar in bilateral trade, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has said.

In a meeting with Chinese and Russian officials this week, Mishustin said more than 90% of trade between the two nations was denominated in either Russia’s ruble or China’s yuan. That “demonstrates almost full de-dollarization of economic ties,” Russia’s state-run news agency TASS quoted him as saying.

Trade between Russia and China has also expanded this year, as Western sanctions have made Russia’s economy more reliant on China for trade. Mishustin said total transactions between the two countries had swelled to a record $200 billion this year.

Meanwhile, Russia-US trade recently plummeted to a 30-year low. That came after the US and its allies largely cut off Moscow from the global financial system for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

At the same time, Beijing has made some gains in trying to internationalize the yuan.

Its share of global payments rose from 1.9% in January to 3.6% in October, and the People’s Bank of China has signed bilateral currency swaps with more than 30 central banks, including Saudi Arabia and Argentina.

Those trends attest to the growing desire for Russia, China, and other BRICS nations to de-dollarize their economies, with some commentators fearing the bloc could even issue its own currency to rival the greenback.

Most economists, though, say those fears are probably overblown. One top Indian official said earlier this year that there was no BRICS currency in the works. And even if there was, the dollar still dominates financial markets by a wide margin, with the greenback accounting for 54% of central-bank exchange reserves and 88% of global trade in 2022.

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