https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...e-haven-status-at-risk?embedded-checkout=true
Markets Are Discovering the Real Trump Trade Is ‘Sell America’
The president’s attacks on the Fed are pushing the world further off its American axis, as governments and investors lose confidence in the US dollar and bonds.
By
Saleha Mohsin and
Carter Johnson
22 April 2025 at 3:00 AM SGT
Two months into Donald Trump’s second term, the pillars of American financial hegemony — erected over the best part of a century — have rarely looked shakier.
Trump’s renewed tirades against the Federal Reserve, including the most explicit threats yet to fire Chair Jerome Powell, only amplified the shockwaves from his declaration of trade war on pretty much everyone. It’s forcing a reappraisal of the assets fundamental to US economic dominance. The dollar and Treasury bonds, traditional havens at times of stress, suddenly look much less appealing. It’s not long since investors were anticipating a so-called Trump trade, essentially turbocharging US exceptionalism, but now it looks more like a sell-America trade.
And that’s just part of an even broader and likely painful shift. The role of US households as goods-buyers of last resort for the global economy, and the American military as linchpin of security and political alliances, are being called into question too.
Governments everywhere are in the same boat as money managers: struggling to reorient themselves. It’s a turbulent backdrop for the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, which this week brings global economy chiefs to Washington — for decades the pole of world order, and now the epicenter of disturbance.
Trump at an Easter prayer service and dinner at the White House, on April 16.Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
“The geopolitical power structure is being reorganized under our eyes,” Jens Weidmann, the chairman of Commerzbank AG and previously the head of Germany's central bank, told a London audience last week. The “exorbitant privilege of the US,” he said — using a phrase coined in Europe more than half a century ago to describe the dominance of the dollar — “may not be carved in stone.”
Compounding the concerns, Trump is now escalating his war of words against the Fed, demanding immediate interest-rate cuts. Lawyers doubt he’s authorized to fire Powell. But the damage to investor confidence in the central bank’s independence — part of the bedrock appeal of US markets, along with a wider faith in the rule of law — may already be done.
“While we still treat a removal of the Fed's chair as a low-likelihood event, the live prospect of reduced Fed independence unlocks dollar risks too large to ignore,” Barclays strategists wrote in a Monday note downgrading their dollar forecast.
Of course the US is likely too big to topple too fast, but this month’s upheaval can’t be written off as an unintended side-effect. It’s true that Trump dialed back some tariffs in response to market squalls. But his administration explicitly wants radical change on all fronts — arguing that other countries have been freeloading off America’s currency, consumers and military.
The US long relied on the lure of its consumer-led economy and the greenback as the underpinnings of global finance and trade, and enjoyed what were widely seen as benefits. Trump and his team are focused on the perceived costs — including the loss of jobs and manufacturing industry, and large debts racked up to the rest of the world.
The US relies on capital inflows to finance its fiscal and trade deficits. Instead of money pouring into the country, it seemed to fly out immediately after April 2, when the president entered the White House’s Rose Garden brandishing a chart that showed the tariff hikes he planned to impose on almost every country — from friendly neighbors to chief superpower rival China.
Foreigners own $19 trillion of US equities, $7 trillion of Treasuries and $5 trillion of US corporate bonds, accounting for about 20% to 30% of the total market, according to Torsten Slok of Apollo Management. The unwinding of those holdings could cause substantial pain.
The floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 9.Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
“Consider the damage to America’s reputation by this sudden pivot to highly protectionist policies,” says David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management in New York. The resulting loss of confidence in American policy “reduces the price people are willing to pay for US assets.”
At home, Trump’s tariffs have sent consumers and business into a funk – hammering the stocks of companies likely to face weaker demand, costlier inputs and foreign retaliation. The S&P 500 has tumbled almost 10% since April 2, wiping out roughly $4.8 trillion in market value.
A Bloomberg gauge of the greenback is down more than 7% this year, its worst annual start since the index’s 2005 launch. Most eye-catching, however, has been the slump in Treasuries, which — thanks to the backing of Uncle Sam — typically do well when other markets are being roiled, as on Sept. 11, 2001 and during the financial crisis.
This month has witnessed the biggest weekly surge in the yield on 10-year Treasuries — a benchmark that guides the rate of everything from mortgages to corporate borrowing — in more than two decades. Yields eased from a peak near 4.6% after Trump walked back some of his tariff plans — reportedly on concern about the bond rout — but they’ve been climbing again since his Fed-bashing gained steam.
That the dollar fell and yields rose was startling for some investors, given that the currency and borrowing costs are typically positively tied to each other. Instead, the relationship is now the weakest in around three years — suggesting a blanket aversion to US assets, and skepticism of typical risk hedges.
Dollar's Linkage to US Yields Breaks Down After April 2
US currency gauge has deviated from yields amid Trump's tariffs
“The thing that’s been the most surprising has been that Treasuries and the dollar are not behaving in the safe haven role that we’ve seen before,” said Tracey Manzi, a senior investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. “Clearly the market as a whole has not absorbed the tariff news well.”
To be sure, history counsels caution. The US has punched holes in its own credibility before — when it shocked the world by abandoning the gold standard in 1971, or when its subprime mortgage collapse triggered a global crisis in 2008 — only to repair them.
What’s more, however much the financial world’s faith in the US has been shaken, it’s short of immediate alternatives.
European assets suddenly look somewhat more appealing, but nothing can match the depth and liquidity of the nearly-$29 trillion Treasury market.
The dollar is involved in some 90% of foreign-exchange trades and accounts for almost 60% of central bank reserves. It has no real competitor capable of filling any void: The euro still lacks the depth of debt instruments required of a reserve asset and perhaps still the political ties across its 20-strong membership, and China’s yuan is managed by its government.
Dollar Continues to Hold Sway in International Trade, Finance
For all these reasons, any so-called regime shift away from the dollar “could well hit its limits soon,” says Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University and author of 2014's "The Dollar Trap."
“Rebuilding institutions and foreign investors’ trust in them will be a long and arduous process, if and when it starts,” he says. “But the US certainly has the luxury of not having any serious rival to its financial markets and currency.”
US officials are telling everyone to hang tight for the full effect of Trump’s economic agenda to set in. “Look at the whole policy,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Bloomberg TV, noting that tax cuts and deregulation are on the way.
The world may not be willing to wait too long.
Trump has carried his brand of economic populism and its “America First” mantra through a decade, including his first presidency. Even so, the apparent ebbing of the US’s global leadership role, so early in his second stint in the White House, has come as a shock. And the backdrop has changed since his first term.