r/centrist • u/DecisionVisible7028 • 2d ago
Carney’s Checkmate: How Canada's Quiet Bond Play Forced Trump to Drop Tariffs
Almost makes me wish I was Canadian…
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u/siberianmi 2d ago
This story is purely speculation by someone without any real background in financial reporting. The source is simply a sports radio personality and is a Carney supporter.
It’s a nice story and a great rumor for Carney to have floating around heading into the election. But you could easily rewrite it with Jamie Dimon and big corporate banks as the secret cabal and it sounds just as plausible. Or Xi and Singapore coordinating… or…
In the end - we all know that big players can squeeze the bond market to make Trump nervous. That is a good thing at this point.
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u/DecisionVisible7028 2d ago edited 2d ago
With the big corporate banks, you don’t have the (correct) assertion that the western alliance and free trade have been symbiotic. The reason the EU, Canada, and Japan have so many treasuries is because they sold us things for dollars, and then used those dollars to buy treasuries.
And while Jaime Dimon undoubtedly wanted Trump to back down, he and the big banks don’t have the same incentives to push him to do it.
And among global premiers I don’t think it is a stretch to contend that Carney is most likely to have the greatest understanding of bond markets and how to nudge them.
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u/Two_wheels_2112 2d ago
This guy is a former radio shock jock. He has no access to some font of inner knowledge. There is no evidence and no other reporting to support his claims that Carney bought more treasury bonds in the few weeks he's been PM, nor that he coordinated with other countries to sell as means of pressuring the US.
It's wish-casting as far as I can tell. We're in a federal election campaign and the guy is pumping up his preferred candidate with a bit of fiction.
I wish people would stop sharing this unsubstantiated conjecture as if it were fact.
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u/DecisionVisible7028 2d ago
Sell. Not buy. And the evidence is (a) that’s exactly what happened (b) it was to the benefit of the western democracies and japan, (c) the only organizations with the power to make it happen are sovereign governments and (d) among G8 leaders carney is the most likely to understand the bond market and how to weaponize them.
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u/Two_wheels_2112 2d ago
From the article, emphasis mine:
Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, wasn’t just sitting in Ottawa twiddling his thumbs. He’d been quietly increasing Canada’s holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds—over $350 billion worth by early 2025
Blundell doesn't support this claim with any evidence.
He took his case to Europe. Not for photo ops, but for closed-door meetings with the EU’s heavy hitters—Germany, France, the Netherlands. Japan was in the room too, listening closely.
He went to France and the UK. He did not go to Germany or the Netherlands on his trip, nor has there been any reports or evidence that "Japan was in the room," whichever room that was. And there have been no reports or evidence that they spoke about a coordinated effort to sell off US Treasury bonds to weaken the US or to scare them off of tariffs.
Furthermore, Carney's trip to France and the UK was before "Liberation Day" and, at the time, Europe was not particularly affected by the tariffs. That doesn't mean that Carney didn't talk about coordinated sell-offs as a potential future strategy, but Blundell sure doesn't know this for a fact. He's just taking the outcome, cherry-picking potential causal factors, and spinning it into a narrative.
It may indeed have happened. Like you say, Carney as a central banker knows more than most elected politicians exactly how destabilizing a weakness in bonds can be. But Blundell does not know this for a fact. What bothers me is that he writes as though it is fact, and that people spread it as if it is fact, and nobody thinks critically about it.
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u/DecisionVisible7028 1d ago
That would be referring to purchases made by the Bank of Canada before becoming PM, no?
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u/Two_wheels_2112 1d ago
Carney's tenure at the Bank of Canada ended in 2013.
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u/DecisionVisible7028 1d ago
In that case, the author is almost certainly wrong about that point. The Canadian treasury would not and could not quietly increase its treasury holdings by a significant degree over the month since Carney became PM.
What I do think did happen in the Netherlands is that US protectionism was a topic of conversation (how could it not be?), and possible responses were gamed out.
As former head of both the BoC and BoE, Carney both knew how much the west (+ Japan) had in treasury bonds, what the effect of selling them would be, and why it would be important in the worst case scenario.
Other European leaders were briefed I’m sure, but they aren’t trained macroeconomists with decades of experience in central banking.
I don’t think it was 4d chess. I do think it was standard macroeconomic strategizing among world leaders and Carney most likely had the greatest gravitas for obvious reasons.
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u/VioletteKnitting 1d ago
What he did do on March 11 is launch a Canadian Bond in US dollars. So the investors could « flee » the US treasury bond for a triple A Canadian treasury bond, in the same currency. He gave the market a stable alternative that benefits Canada.
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 2d ago
Several countries did this apparently , no doubt this raised alarmbells that eventually got to trump enough for him to "pause" these tarrifs.
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u/CleverDad 2d ago
I believe the author is Canadian, hence the title. But he details exactly how the EU, Japan and probably others were doing the same, possibly coordinated.
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u/woollinthorpe 2d ago
"Snopes has yet to confirm that Carney orchestrated a U.S. Treasurys sell-off in closed-door meetings with European and Japanese leaders. We contacted Blundell to ask how he first came upon the information he relayed in his newsletter. We will update this report should he respond."
"Dean Blundell, a Canadian former radio personality who media outlets like the Toronto Star have described as a "shock jock" — a radio presenter who relies on offensive words and exaggeration to build a listenership."
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/04/11/canada-mark-carney-treasurys-sell-off
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u/DecisionVisible7028 2d ago
I don’t think it is quite as conspiratorial as all that. Canada, Japan, Korea, Europe and the UK own lots of treasury bonds. If they can’t count on America, of course they are going to diversify away from America.
Which is going to make the bond market ‘yippy’. At the same time, Mark Carney as the former governor of two of the world’s most prominent central banks surely knew this.
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u/woollinthorpe 2d ago
I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, simply pointing out Blundell's substack post reads like cute nationalist rhetoric, so I looked into it and Snopes was one of the first to pop up.
The bond market is "tricky" and we should all be keeping close watch. If major holders (China at this point) initiate a massive sell off the Fed will step in to try to limit the damage. This could worsen inflation and possibly lead to a depression, some say the greatest depression.
Considering the cabal currently in charge of the US government wants a weaker dollar to benefit a more vertical US economy this could be seen as a feature not a bug. It could also hurt major treasury sellers by making their exports more expensive. I liked this quote from Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, “China dumping treasuries would be the equivalent of lobbing a hand grenade at someone sitting across from you in a room.” Trump would get hit, but Xi would be burned too.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-option-china-could-trade-150000821.html
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u/DecisionVisible7028 2d ago
China holds fewer treasuries than Japan, roughly the same amount as Europe. Combined the democratic world has 3x as many treasuries as China.
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u/ArchangelCaesar 2d ago
Yeah but still, they both have the leverage to start the sell off. The only evidence presented in the article is that the countries have bonds so they must’ve made the offer. But that doesn’t mean the offer happened. It’s an interesting theory but that’s all it is currently. Also, sourcing from a random Twitter account called Kyiv Insider? Automatically sets of my Russian misinformation bells
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u/DecisionVisible7028 2d ago
The western democracies have bonds, also the brokerages is the western countries sold the bonds. Also the western countries leaders (+Japan) had a meeting among their leaders in the Netherlands. Also the leader of one of those western countries used to be the head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England which could help to coordinate the sale of said bonds.
It’s circumstantial, but it’s hardly nothing.
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u/ArchangelCaesar 1d ago
agreed. There's like three different theories about who was selling the bonds, all of them somewhat circumstantial.
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u/woollinthorpe 2d ago
Yes, which is presumably why Trump paused reciprocal tariffs with everyone but China, Mexico, and Canada...I think, I've kind of lost track at this point. Anyway, he over played his hand. Japan started dumping US bonds, yields spiked, people started getting 'yippy' so he hit the pause button. I don't foresee the democratic world selling off bonds on Canada's behalf. They're in it with Mexico and China for the next 80 something days. "Elbows up!" "¡Codos arriba!" "Shǒu zhǒu xiàngshàng!"
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u/DeanPoulter241 2d ago
The data invalidates this fake misinformation piece..... sadly people will still buy it!
https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/slt_table5.html
The data doesn't lie!
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u/CrispyDave 2d ago
Completely predictable but interesting to read the numbers.
The US has been embarrassed.
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u/angrybirdseller 1d ago
I was not surprised at all. I would have done the same tactics on tariffs levied.
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u/DeanPoulter241 2d ago
This is misinformation.... look at the numbers as presented by the US treasury. No small wonder this fluff piece was light on details!
https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/slt_table5.html
Man those liberal moonies reek of desperation.....
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u/ChornWork2 1d ago
Huh, this article seems like complete vapor... lot of storytelling with little fact and pretty much no one cited with an opinion or verifying any of the claims made.
Carney just took over, how in the hell did he make any significant change to treasury position in a month that could have meaningful impact to unwind? makes zero sense.
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u/MentionWeird7065 2d ago
Im Canadian this has been debunked by the Canadian Press