Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is waging a relentless battle against inflation that threatens to leave a path of destruction on the global economy in its wake.

The Fed — carrying out its steepest interest rate hikes in three decades — has fueled market turmoil by boosting the value of the dollar and feeding higher borrowing costs from the U.K. to Japan to Latin America. But Powell’s No. 1 enemy is inflation at home, and he has signaled that the Fed will do what’s best for the U.S., no matter what.

“We are very aware of what’s going on in other economies around the world,” he said last week after the Fed raised rates for the fifth time this year. But, he added, “it’s hard to talk about collaboration in a world where people have very different levels of interest rates.”

Powell’s actions have caused a flood of money to flee the shores of other countries for safer American investments that offer a much more attractive payoff because the U.S. now has its highest interest rates since 2008. A stronger dollar means the cost for Europeans of heating their homes and powering their cities, already driven sky high by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is getting even greater. And smaller developing countries could begin to drown in ever-more-burdensome debt payments.

Fed officials are in regular communication with their counterparts in other countries, and Steven Kamin, who led the Fed board’s international finance division until 2020, said Powell and his fellow policymakers are going to hear a lot of anxiety from foreign officials about the fallout caused by the central bank’s policies.

“Will that stay the Fed’s hand? Probably not,” said Kamin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “They’re pretty single-mindedly focused on inflation.”

Most central bankers, too, are locked in their own fights with inflation, so they understand the Fed’s resolve; indeed, price stability in the U.S. also benefits the rest of the world. But with the heightened threat of global recession, one of the largest risks looming from the Fed’s actions is that other central banks might soon feel pressure to cut rates as their economies contract. They’ll have a harder time doing so, however, because that would drive even more precious capital to American markets.

“We might enter a phase in which we run the risk, just because of the fear of financial volatility, of going against the Fed,” said Alejandro Werner, a former official of the Mexican government and of the International Monetary Fund. “Central banks in Latin America and other emerging markets could be much more cautious in loosening their monetary policy stance and inject some additional recessionary forces.”

Europe, like the U.S., has been facing decades-high price spikes. Preliminary German data showed annual inflation hit 10 percent in September. But the European Central Bank has been timid compared to the Fed.

That’s because the ECB, led by Christine Lagarde, is facing inflation pressures heavily driven by factors that monetary policy can hardly influence. Lagarde said Wednesday that 60 percent of the inflation surge in the eurozone can be ascribed to energy, an intense side effect of the Ukraine war. In contrast, prices are rising in the U.S. in part because government and consumer spending have been so strong.

And while the ECB has lately taken a significantly harder line on inflation, investors fear that a potential recession might stop the central bank in its tracks. The war in Ukraine is pushing up energy import prices, and it is also expected to leave deep marks on growth.

In the worst case, widespread blackouts could cripple the region’s industry. Dire economic prospects may hamper the need and readiness to raise borrowing costs much further. While Fed interest rates are seen peaking at 4.3 percent next year, markets are betting that those in the ECB won’t hit 3 percent.

The last two periods of dollar peaks ended with coordinated efforts by the U.S. and other countries to intervene in the currency’s value, leading to speculation that could become an option once again. But there is little evidence that such an agreement is in the offing.

“I don’t anticipate that that’s where we’re headed,” White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said at an event Tuesday evening.

Still, as global policymakers gather for the IMF/World Bank annual meetings next month in Washington, there will be a lot of focus on the extent to which the U.S. and its allies will affirm their commitment, most recently signed in May this year, to allowing the value of their currencies to be set by markets.

A Japanese flag flutters at the Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo on July 29, 2022.