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A comment on Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries. Parent comment

Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by ajross on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @09:42PM (#43639830)
This is all correct, but it's a first principles explanation that doesn't explain why US bonds, and in particular the 10-year note, spiked today. Yes, eventually excessive tariffs would have that result. They literally hadn't even taken effect yet. So this doesn't explain the bond motion today.

Someone was dumping, we don't know who or why. But the answer to that question is a lot (a lot) more important than people realize, and certainly more so than the immediate market motion or tariff policy.

Honestly if the answer was "The PRC was unloading bonds to send a message" that's sort of the best option, as they have limited wiggle room to continue to do so without wrecking their own financial situation.

If it's "The market as a whole lost confidence in US debt", then we're fucked no matter what Trump does next.

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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by bilbo0s on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @09:47PM (#43639848)
Hmm.

The problem is that China holds only 2.6% of US Debt as of February 2025. Can they leverage that small a percentage to make a market move like that? Especially assuming they didn't dedicate all of their holdings to that action?

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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by ajross on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @09:54PM (#43639893)
It depends entirely on what the trading volume is, and I don't know. But again IMHO it's critically important that someone find out.
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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by intended on Thursday April 10, 2025 @01:31AM (#43640946)
You know what the answer is. It’s the global system dumping US debt. Its not like someone knew THIS would be the specific smoke signal that Trump would see and say “oh, lets pump the brakes”
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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by scotty79 on Thursday April 10, 2025 @03:47PM (#43647422)
Reversing idiotic decisions after not being able to explain away the backlash they caused is kind of his thing and many people recognized it and expected it before the tariff pause.
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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by sdenton4 on Thursday April 10, 2025 @12:57AM (#43640752)
"someone"... Or lots of people looking at US stupidity and deciding that their long term bonds were suddenly looking like a bad investment.
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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday April 10, 2025 @02:22AM (#43641196)
The FT reported that lots of hedge funds were unwinding a bunch of trades as they needed liquidity.
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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by ladyanita22 on Thursday April 10, 2025 @05:59AM (#43642384)
It's heavily rumored it was Japan.

https://x.com/Nihonpolitics/status/1910096159835594786?t=RWB...

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Re:Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries by gehwartzen on Thursday April 10, 2025 @07:47AM (#43642889)
I think it’s largely irrelevant now. The cats out of the bag and any country holding large amounts of t-notes and facing hostility from the US will dump them to get Trump to back off.
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