> Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.
True. The odd thing is that the previous tariffs announcements on supposed allies, plus all the other sabre-rattling that Trump has been doing, NATO-bashing, flipping on Ukraine, etc., had already triggered a crisis of confidence. So what did they expect? That unexpectedly unleashing of wildly unreasonable and poorly-calculated tariffs would inspire _more_ confidence? If getting investors to flock to T-bills was the goal, it was always bound to fail. (It only worked in the short term because T-bills are the default in a time of market uncertainty; but when it became clear that the uncertainty was caused not by the market, but by the government's behavior, well then T-bills don't look so good anymore).
True. The odd thing is that the previous tariffs announcements on supposed allies, plus all the other sabre-rattling that Trump has been doing, NATO-bashing, flipping on Ukraine, etc., had already triggered a crisis of confidence. So what did they expect? That unexpectedly unleashing of wildly unreasonable and poorly-calculated tariffs would inspire _more_ confidence? If getting investors to flock to T-bills was the goal, it was always bound to fail. (It only worked in the short term because T-bills are the default in a time of market uncertainty; but when it became clear that the uncertainty was caused not by the market, but by the government's behavior, well then T-bills don't look so good anymore).