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Assuming, for the sake of the question, that a well-resourced adversary (another country, most likely) had the means and motive to conduct economic warfare against the United States through large-scale counterfeiting, what would be the scope of the impact?

For example, if shipping containers full of $100 notes that were indistinguishable from genuine US currency were distributed around the world, would that be enough to destabilize the US dollar domestically, or would it be just a drop in the bucket relative to the amount of dollars available globally?

kgutwin
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    There are other questions about counterfeiting, but they did not seem to apply. I have doubts that there can be a non-opinion based answer. An issue with the question is that the existence of a shipping container of counterfeits tells us little: how can they be distributed? Finally, the status of US notes in a foreign country might plummet due to a wave of counterfeits, but that is probably not going to have a measurable effect on the domestic economy of the United States. – Brian Romanchuk Feb 26 '21 at 22:23
  • I was once rooting through the Treasury’s archives for something else and ran across an order from when the Germans invaded France, banning any US currency from being brought in from France for this very reason. The question as worded is difficult to answer while relying on public sources, but it’s certainly a long-standing concern for any monetary sovereign. – dismalscience Feb 27 '21 at 00:57
  • Related: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7459/has-a-state-ever-attacked-another-one-by-printing-fake-money/ –  Feb 27 '21 at 01:03

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