Ukraine considers shift from dollar to euro amid geopolitical realignments
Ukraine is starting to consider a shift away from the U.S. dollar, possibly linking its currency more closely to the euro amid the splintering of global trade and its growing ties to Europe, Central Bank Gov. Andriy Pyshnyi said, Reuters reported.
Potential accession to the European Union, a "strengthening of the EU's role in ensuring our defense capabilities, greater volatility in global markets, and the probability of global-trade fragmentation," are forcing the central bank to review whether the euro should be the reference currency for Ukraine's hryvnia instead of the dollar, Pyshnyi said in emailed remarks.
"This work is complex and requires high-quality, versatile preparation," Pyshnyi added, in the most direct comments by a Ukrainian official on a possible shift.
The dollar dominates international trade and accounts for the majority of global reserves. Major economies including Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong peg their currencies to the dollar, according to Reuters.
Judge orders Trump administration to admit roughly 12,000 refugees
A judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to admit some 12,000 refugees into the United States under a court order partially blocking the president’s efforts to suspend the nation’s refugee admissions program, Associated Press reported.
The order from U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead followed arguments from the Justice Department and refugee resettlement agencies over how to interpret a federal appeals court ruling that significantly narrowed an earlier decision from Whitehead.
During a hearing last week, the administration said it should only have to process 160 refugees into the country and that it would likely appeal any order requiring it to admit thousands. But the judge dismissed the government’s analysis, saying it required “not just reading between the lines” of the 9th Circuit’s ruling, “but hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”
“This Court will not entertain the Government’s result-oriented rewriting of a judicial order that clearly says what it says,” Whitehead wrote Monday. “The Government is free, of course, to seek further clarification from the Ninth Circuit. But the Government is not free to disobey statutory and constitutional law — and the direct orders of this Court and the Ninth Circuit — while it seeks such clarification," according to Associated Press.
