Keep climate a national priority
Reader Reba wrote in with this request. A viral Substack post by Dean Blundell, a former radio personality, calls an alleged financial move by Mark Carney a “checkmate” against US president Donald Trump.
The post goes on to say “While Trump was gearing up his trade war machine, Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, wasn’t just sitting in Ottawa twiddling his thumbs. He’d been quietly increasing Canada’s holdings of US Treasury bonds—over $350 billion worth by early 2025, part of the $8.53 trillion foreign countries hold in US debt. On the surface, it looked like a safe play, a hedge against economic chaos. But it wasn’t just defense. It was a loaded gun.”
The post then alleges that Carney met with various European leaders and unveiled a plan. “The pitch was simple: if Trump went too far with tariffs, Canada wouldn’t just retaliate with duties on American cars or steel. It would start offloading those Treasury bonds. Not a fire sale — nothing so crude. A slow, steady bleed.”
Our reader says she also saw these claims on the YouTube feed of Adam Mockler, a pundit and personality covering politics.
Verdict: False
It seems that these claims started making the rounds on social media sites in March, particularly Facebook, after a post on Binance Square, but were amplified after Blundell’s April 10 newsletter.
In his newsletter, Blundell claims that Carney spent the early part of 2025 amassing US treasury bonds, and it is true that both Canada and Japan were among the biggest buyers of those bonds in February.
But Carney only came into office on March 14. He had no power to make those earlier purchases. There is also no evidence Carney marshalled global support to dump US bonds to weaken Trump’s position.
On March 10, the government announced plans to issue a US dollar bond, worth $3.5 billion. As The Canadian Press reported, issuing US dollar bonds is routine. "Canada is not selling off its existing US government securities," an official with the Department of Finance told the CP.
For a deeper dive into this particular rumor, both the Canadian Press and Snopes have published breakdowns, and they are worth checking out.
Comments
But that wasn't how things might have played out. Did Carney, on his trip to Europe as Canada's PM, arrange for some coordinated selling of US treasuries? I think that was in a Dan Gardner newsletter. Strange that something so interesting isn't something we've heard much about!
Who is in charge?
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=7838
Can the bond markets dictate the cost of public borrowing?
Can the bond markets close down a sovereign government?
The answer to both questions is absolutely not! The intuition that is rehearsed daily in the media commentary and is being encacted by policy makers is flawed.
***
The government (via the central bank) can simply enforce a yield structure onto bond markets. Like it or lump it. If the bond markets don’t like it then the central bank can buy the debt.
Better still, the government can simply avoid issuing debt altogether and deprive the “bond markets” of the corporate welfare."