The renminbi as an international currency

Abstract

The dollar in 1914, like the renminbi today, played a negligible role in international trade and payments. Negotiable trade credits denominated in dollars were nonexistent. Manufacturers and wholesalers from other countries seeking to export and import from the United States and, more strikingly, even U.S. exporters and importers themselves, when seeking to obtain credit for a transaction, did so with the intermediation of an investment bank based in London. Those negotiable credit instruments known as bankers acceptances were denominated in sterling, since this was the currency in which London banks were accustomed to dealing. Smaller markets in negotiable trade credits existed in France (in francs) and Germany (in marks) but not in the United States, this despite the fact that by 1914 the United States was the largest trading nation. The dollar similarly played a negligible role as a currency in which to denominate international bonds, even though the U.S. turned from capital importer to capital exporter after 1890. The dollar accounted for just a tiny sliver of the foreign reserves of central banks and governments; only de facto U.S. dependencies like the Philippines held any of their reserves in dollars.