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How?

It's quite nicely explained on the official EU site (much better than how I understand):

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/liquidity_lines/htm...

Without a swap line banks couldn't just treat EUR as USD whenever an entity needs to keep USD for import/export purposes.

That goes both ways. The US economy is dependent on having markets for consumer goods. Losing the EU as an easy market nukes the US economy as well.

Yeah, one would think post-Brexit and post-pandemic and post-Russian invasion of Ukraine people would in general be more aware of interdependence in trade, finance, manufacturing, etc. but apparently not. (Yes, they did say that before WWI, and today it's a million times more intertwined)

It still matters game theoretically who loses more on not having a trade, and US having the reserve currency means that it has clearly more power over EU than the other way around.

Surprisingly the trade to GDP ratio is quite low for the US. And a good chunk of that trade is with Canada and Mexico.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?most_rec...

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