In a time when many nations have gone public with their intention to ditch the dollar in part or in whole, in bilateral trade with non-US counterparts, either to prevent the US from having “veto power” of commerce courtesy of SWIFT or simply in response to Trump’s “America First” doctrine, attention has long focused on Russia and China – the two natural adversaries to the US – to see if and when they would accelerate plans for de-dollarization.

To be sure, the two nations wouldn’t be the first to reduce their reliance on the dollar, as we have discussed in recent months:

However, when it comes to symbolism and optics, no other pair of nations would have as much an impact in dumping the dollar as (quasi) superpowers China and Russia. Which is why we found it a material development when Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development said on Thursday that Moscow and Beijing are working on an inter-governmental agreement to expand the use of the ruble and yuan in mutual trade settlements.

“The document is currently being prepared, the process is not easy,” said Deputy Minister of Russia’s Economic Development Sergey Gorkov, as quoted by TASS. “Russia and China have had some experience of using national currencies in bilateral trade”.

Gorkov said that Russia and China had been successfully implementing the terms of ruble-yuan currency swap agreement signed in 2014 to boost bilateral trade using national currencies and eliminate dependence on the dollar and the euro. The deal was extended at the end of 2017. Gorkov, however, did not provide information about when the new document will be signed.