The mainstream media is not covering the bond market as it should. Americans are not aware that tariffs and tax cuts could throw us into a depression.
DANGER: Potential bond market crash
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Summary
In this compelling segment, the host deconstructs the overlooked but urgent economic threat posed by a potential bond market crash, exacerbated by Donald Trump’s misguided tariff policies and tax cuts for the wealthy. He explains how global faith in U.S. Treasury bonds, once considered unshakable, is waning due to reckless fiscal decisions, geopolitical antagonism, and systemic inequality. The host weaves together a cogent analysis of how working-class Americans ultimately bear the brunt of these elite-engineered economic schemes while also underscoring the false narratives fed to the public about tariffs, debt, and financial markets.
Five Key Bullet Points:
- Bond Market Alarm: Foreign confidence in U.S. bonds is declining, and a significant sell-off by countries like China or Japan could spike interest rates, raising borrowing costs and triggering a fiscal crisis.
- Tariff Misdirection: Trump’s tariffs, touted as economic protectionism, function as regressive taxes on American consumers, especially the working class.
- Debt Hypocrisy: While railing against deficit spending, Trump’s administration ballooned the national debt with tax cuts for the wealthy—while borrowing from Social Security to cover the gap.
- Geopolitical Risk: The rise of BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) threatens U.S. financial dominance; their economic alliance could retaliate against U.S. bond dependency.
- Economic Literacy: The host urges Americans to understand that monetary and fiscal policies are not magic—they’re arithmetic—and progressive reforms are both viable and necessary.
Progressive-Slant Summary:
This segment powerfully indicts Trump’s destructive economic policies and the bipartisan failure to confront the real dangers threatening America’s fiscal future. Rather than shielding working-class Americans, Trump’s tariffs tax them while his billionaire-friendly tax cuts destabilize Social Security and grow inequality. The host champions a bold progressive vision rooted in economic literacy, fairness, and global cooperation—not nationalist fantasy or plutocratic greed. Only by rejecting these neoliberal myths and embracing systemic reform can the country avoid a preventable financial catastrophe.
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The United States stands at the edge of an economic precipice, largely ignored by the mainstream media and most political commentators. While inflation, wages, and unemployment figures dominate the nightly news, the bond market—a critical pillar of our global economic standing—is teetering on the brink. What makes this moment particularly dangerous is the intersection of three volatile forces: reckless fiscal policy, a shifting geopolitical balance, and Donald Trump’s economic nationalism wrapped in ignorance and hubris.
At the center of this storm lies the bond market, often misunderstood by the public but essential to American economic stability. When the government spends more than it earns—a perpetual condition in a neoliberal system that disinvests from the public sphere—it borrows to make the difference by issuing bonds. These bonds are essentially IOUs from the American taxpayer, promising to repay creditors with interest. For decades, they have been considered among the safest investments in the world. But that foundational faith is starting to erode—and it’s no coincidence that this erosion correlates with Trump-era fiscal recklessness.
As the host lays out, the top holders of U.S. debt include major geopolitical players like Japan ($1.079 trillion), China ($760 billion), and the United Kingdom ($740 billion). Smaller but substantial holders include Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, and Belgium. These nations and financial centers effectively prop up America’s ability to function—funding our deficits, financing our wars, enabling tax cuts for the wealthy, and maintaining our global influence. Yet, instead of strengthening these relationships, Trump’s policies have alienated these stakeholders, jeopardizing the flow of capital that historically supported our expansive fiscal footprint.
The Trump Tariff Trap
One of Trump’s most dangerous maneuvers has been weaponizing tariffs under the guise of economic patriotism. While framed as a punishment to foreign nations like China and Mexico, tariffs are, in effect, a stealth tax on the American people. When a Chinese-made iPhone is taxed at the border, that cost isn’t absorbed by Apple or the Chinese manufacturer—it is passed on to the consumer. This regressive tax disproportionately affects working-class Americans, contradicting Trump’s populist rhetoric.
Even more damaging is the economic retaliation these countries can—and likely will—engage in. The biggest threat isn’t in trade alone but in how countries like China or Japan could start dumping U.S. Treasury bonds in response to these tariffs. A bond sell-off from even one major holder would trigger a chain reaction, forcing other countries to unload their holdings to avoid losses. This would drive bond prices down and yields (i.e., interest rates) up. When yields rise, so do borrowing costs—for the government, businesses, and consumers. This is how a bond market crash can rapidly become a full-blown depression.
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and one of the world’s most respected hedge fund managers, has warned that America’s trajectory resembles that of empires in decline. Dalio argues that mounting debt, loss of global trust, and rising internal divisions are all signs of an unsustainable model. His concern is not hyperbole but rooted in decades of market observation and historical patterns. In a recent interview, Dalio subtly suggested that if current trends continue, we are not headed for a mere recession but something far more catastrophic—a depression.
Austerity in the Shadows
Trump’s policies endanger the economy externally through trade wars and rising debt and destabilize it internally through efforts to slash taxes for the wealthy while gutting social programs. The bond market matters here, too. Social Security, for instance, is one of the largest holders of U.S. government bonds. When Trump’s tax cuts blow holes in the budget, the Treasury increasingly borrows from the Social Security Trust Fund. It’s a self-fulfilling collapse: cut revenue, borrow more, threaten Social Security’s solvency, then claim we “can’t afford” benefits. It’s fiscal sabotage dressed in populist clothing.
Progressive Alternatives
The crisis looming over the bond market is not inevitable. It is manufactured through decades of neoliberal economics, turbocharged by Trumpist recklessness. Progressives have long warned that our economic model—favoring financial speculation over production, privatization over public investment, and tax cuts for billionaires over basic infrastructure—is unsustainable.
The answer lies in a fundamental reorientation of our economy. First, end the Bush-Trump tax cuts and implement the Patriotic Millionaires’ tax plan, which calls for a top marginal tax rate of at least 60% on ultra-high incomes, a wealth tax, and a tax on financial transactions. Second, tariffs should not be reframed as a blunt weapon for nationalism but as precision tools for rebuilding domestic industries like clean energy, semiconductors, and public transit manufacturing—with the understanding that these must be temporary and strategic.
Third, we must return to the basics of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), as Stephanie Kelton outlines in The Deficit Myth. In a sovereign fiat currency system, the real constraint is not the deficit but inflation and resource utilization. We must invest boldly in people, green infrastructure, and education, not continue to worship “fiscal responsibility” as defined by billionaire-funded think tanks.
Conclusion
The danger we face is not abstract. A crash in the bond market triggered by geopolitical retaliation and Trumpist economic policies would wreak havoc on interest rates, devastate public services, and plunge millions into poverty. We must recognize that tariffs are taxes on ourselves, that trickle-down tax cuts do not grow the economy, and that bonds—far from being arcane financial instruments—are the lifeblood of our social compact.
If we fail to challenge these myths and reverse course, we risk learning that the empire has no clothes and that the bond market crash will be a societal collapse rather than a financial story.
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