The U.S. can legally blow up a business deal between two other countries that have never touched American soil, just because they used the U.S. dollar to pay for it.
April 10, 2026
Original Paper
Hiding in Plain Sight: Currency-Based Jurisdiction in U.S. Sanctions Enforcement
SSRN · 6439345
The Takeaway
We think of laws as being tied to geography or citizenship. In reality, the U.S. uses the dollar as a legal hook, claiming jurisdiction over global trade anywhere on Earth as long as the currency used is green.
From the abstract
That the United States government exerts pressure on parties around the world through its use of economic sanctions is widely known. Less noticed, but no less significant, is a particular jurisdictional move in U.S. sanctions practice: attaching sanctions to transactions that never touch U.S. territory and involve no U.S. persons, yet are denominated in U.S. dollars. This “currency-based jurisdiction” occupies a liminal space between the traditional categories of “primary” and “secondary” sancti