Guy Labat

I think the risk is that on the margin, they choose to diversify into other government bonds a little bit.

And each little bit matters.

Treasury Department is issuing trillions of dollars of debt each year.

And so a little bit of swing in demand can really change the cost of how the U.S.

government finances itself.

The sell America trade is something that was probably more obvious in the stock market, particularly around the tariff announcements last April.

There was a movement by lots of investors, both in the U.S.

and overseas,

to reduce their holdings of U.S.

dollar assets and invest in things like European assets and Japanese assets and others as well.

Now, has it affected the bond markets?

Briefly, but it wasn't in any sustained manner because the U.S.

bond markets did pretty well last year.

It is extraordinarily complicated.

And really, the biggest risk, and it's still, in my view, a modest one, is about how the United States government borrows money, not about credit cards, not directly.

It could affect mortgage rates.

And mortgage rates, ironically, have gone up

since some of the announcements several weeks ago to try to bring them down, in large part because of this geopolitical tension.

Big tech companies are going to be having massive capital expenditure needs this year.

And one thing that they're going to use to fund that is debt issuance.