I think to some extent we've been riding that initial wave of trust and backing. The alternative I suppose is we've figured out how to manage things correctly and no longer need a peg, but the lead up to the end of Bretton woods sounds ominously familiar to the 2000s. CBDCs seem like the only thing that could potentially fill a similar role.
"However, from 1950 to 1969, as Germany and Japan recovered, the US share of the world's economic output dropped significantly, from 35% to 27%. Furthermore, a negative balance of payments, growing public debt incurred by the Vietnam War, and monetary inflation by the Federal Reserve caused the dollar to become increasingly overvalued in the 1960s...The American public believed the government was rescuing them from price gougers and from a foreign-caused exchange crisis."[1]
[https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united...]
Like Tether, if you can’t actually redeem it for what it’s nominally backed by, is it really backed by it?