{"id":136450,"date":"2025-04-15T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=136450"},"modified":"2025-04-15T18:13:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:13:01","slug":"bloomberg-in-the-us-china-trade-war-can-china-dent-the-usas-safe-haven-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=136450","title":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) In the US-China Trade War, Can China dent the USA&#8217;s safe-haven status?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One dangerous card that China\u2019s got is its $760 billion holdings in Treasury securities. The country is the US\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ticdata.treasury.gov\/resource-center\/data-chart-center\/tic\/Documents\/slt_table5.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">second-largest foreign creditor<\/a>\u00a0after Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week, the 10-year yield jumped by 50 basis points to 4.49%, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-04-11\/us-treasury-selloff-is-worst-since-repo-market-chaos-in-2019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">biggest weekly surge since 2001<\/a>. Some of the sharpest moves were occurring during Asian hours, prompting speculation that Beijing was in the market. Will China weaponize and dump its holdings?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brushed this fear aside. In a recent\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/tuckercarlson.com\/tucker-show-scott-bessent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">interview<\/a>\u00a0with Tucker Carlson, he talked about the beauty of being the world\u2019s biggest borrower. \u201cIf you take a bank loan, the bank is in charge, they can repossess whatever you borrowed against. But if you take a big enough loan, you\u2019re kind of in charge of the bank,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While that\u2019s true in a distressed scenario, the dynamic doesn\u2019t quite work here. Trump\u2019s abrupt tariff U-turn exposed the White House\u2019s Achilles\u2019 heel: He&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/politics\/policy\/why-trump-blinked-on-tariffs-b588aea8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">blinked<\/a>&nbsp;and paused hikes on all nations except China \u2014 after watching US sovereign bonds tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After all, Bessent, who\u2019s now spearheading tariff negotiations, requires a stable bond market to sell into&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2025-04-13\/why-wouldn-t-china-weaponize-its-760-billion-treasury-holdings\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cOne dangerous card that China\u2019s got is its $760 billion holdings in Treasury securities. The country is the US\u2019s second-largest foreign creditor after Japan.\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/xiuAsrNHxb\">https:\/\/t.co\/xiuAsrNHxb<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Tim O&#39;Brien (@TimOBrien) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TimOBrien\/status\/1911740400437428449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 14, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One dangerous card that China\u2019s got is its $760 billion holdings in Treasury securities. The country is the US\u2019s\u00a0second-largest foreign creditor\u00a0after Japan. Last week, the 10-year yield jumped by 50 basis points to 4.49%, the\u00a0biggest weekly surge since 2001. Some<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=136450\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,209,502,595,592,149,144,151,665],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-americau-s-a","category-china","category-credit-markets","category-currency-markets","category-economy","category-foreign-relations","category-politics-in-general","category-president-donald-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136450"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136455,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136450\/revisions\/136455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}