Abstract
The president’s power over global financial transactions has become one of the most potent tools in America’s foreign policy arsenal. Since the outbreak of World War I, presidents have frequently employed financial instruments to coerce or punish foreign actors. But it was President Biden’s employment of financial weaponry in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that represented the most complex and far-reaching exercise of presidential power in global finance. From weakening the Russian central bank’s access to the dollar market, to cutting off key Russian financial institutions from American lenders, to deplatforming Russian entities from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), Biden undertook a multipronged effort to use global finance as a means to punish, deter, and hobble the Kremlin’s aggression. This paper explores the history, practice, and future of the president’s use of global finance to achieve foreign policy victories. I trace the history of this practice from Woodrow Wilson through the first term of Donald Trump’s presidency. I explain how this history ultimately provided the runway for Biden to launch an unprecedented financial attack on Russia in 2022, which constituted the apex of presidential power in global finance. I also detail how this power may have peaked with the Biden Administration, as both domestic and external factors will likely diminish the president’s power in this realm over the years to come.
Recommended Citation
Michael Glanzel,
Presidential Power and Global Finance: The Rise and Limits of Financial Warfare,
46
Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus.
177
(2026).
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njilb/vol46/iss2/1
