I don't think China has the upper hand on this trade war just because it owns $760B+ of US treasuries
1) They can’t afford it. They can try to BS their way thru this tariff situation but the reality is they have a debt to GDP of 300% that is not sustainable. Debt whether foreign or provincial is still a claim on future productivity.
When the denominator (GDP) flattens and the numerator (total social financing) climbs a vertical wall, you get diminishing marginal utility of capital. Yes US is in a similar situation but we have the strength of the US dollar
China can’t run 1990s style Keynesian infrastructure loops forever without real productivity gains. We’re talking about massive local government liabilities issuing opaque debt to fund 3rd-tier ghost cities with no commercial viability.
Ok they built infrastructure. But what’s the ROI? Japan did the same in the 90s and got 3 lost decades, with productivity flatlining and a BOJ liquidity trap as the only exit valve. China’s on a similar trajectory just with more surveillance and less transparency.
2) Them holding our treasuries doesn’t give them an upper hand. If they dump treasuries, they tank their own reserves, spike the yuan, destroy export competitiveness, and break their own banking system, which is collateralized on USD liquidity. They’re locked into the dollar hegemon system whether they like it or not.
BUT for arguments sake let’s say they do.
First off this would be a multi-decade, systemic shift not a retaliatory switch you flip because you’re mad about tariffs. Global FX markets don’t rebase overnight because of bruised egos.
The USD is the operating system of the global economy. Settlements, trade finance, SWIFT rails, cross-border liquidity pretty much everything clears through a USD matrix. This is reality
If you don’t use the dollar, whatre you going to use? The yuan? That market is illiquid, non-convertible, politically throttled. You can’t run a global treasury function on it
If they dump treasuries at scale (which they can threaten but will NEVR actually do) theyd destroy its own monetary base. Their banking system is essentially a USD shadow bank, holding dollar-denominated reserves to stabilize the renminbi. Like unplugging your own life support to hurt the guy across the room.
And even if China could settle trade in CNY or BRICS coin or barrels of oil it doesn’t mean others will. Systems have network effects. You don’t de-dollarize with press releases; you need infrastructure, trust, liquidity, legal systems, capital flows. None of which exist at USD scale.
The issuer of the world’s reserve wins by default until something better actually exists. We know what that is Bitcoin eventually but that’s a separate convo
All this means is that China has far less fiscal headroom than they let on. Don’t fall for it
@CHPAlerts@Inglewood_PD My prayers go out to the family and for this girls well being. Please watch over her lord. From all of us at https://t.co/6jKRU1nlau
QUICK Overview of FUNDAMENTAL Driving factors for noobs
Major FX Markets:
- Central Bank policy (rate changes, rate differentials, etc)
- Agreements/ settlements between international partners
- Relatively small % movement with imbalances being corrected (leverage needed to trade at retail level)
- "Balanced" pricing
- Country specific politics and global reactive events can play short term roles
- Trade disputes
Major Stock Market Indices:
- Buy trend dominant
- Central bank support (Cartel of the markets) (loose conditions over tight conditions)
- Business/ industrial/ tech sectors dependencies
- Global liquidity flows
- Short term corrections during "crisis" periods that get faded in the
macro
- Major world players depend on bullish stock markets
- 1%ers freedom haven
Commodities:
- Supply and demand changes of the commodity (production, mining, consumption, use etc)
- Geopolitical catalysts (wars, disruptions on shipping, trade disputes, sanctions)
- Global arbitrage (spoofers)
- Central Bank policy
- Seasonality factors
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The Yen is rallying hard. That is NOT a sign that Japan's official FX intervention worked. It very clearly didn't. What's causing the Yen rebound is growing belief in markets that US inflation is slowing. The last US CPI print was on July 11. Yen has been rising ever since...