Making the same mistake in 2 out of 3 opportunities is usually fatal to further confidence. So just re-electing Trump was enough to trigger a steep decline in international trust in US governance. It is now in total free fall and a long way from bottom. US treasuries are just one point of vulnerability in a world that has been losing confidence in US political leadership for decades and has now decided that a major shift in political,military and economic alignments is inevitable.
I see it ultimately as an inevitable and needed shift: Economic, social and even military reality has changed significantly since 1945 or 1971, respectively. A multilateral world order is what many powers on the planet want to see, the US has a leader who is clearly a zero-sum-thinker and thought it would be a good idea to force the rest of the world - including closest allies - to choose between China and the US. The problem is, that the EU’s answer to that always has to be the US AND China. The US is a strong military and trading partner, the trade with China can’t be substituted though. The world is dependent on China’s magnets for instance - no German car without Chinese magnets, while the EU could substitute, Instagram, Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s though. I am sure that this strategy the US administration chose will come back and harm them more than was anticipated.
II always thought that the film 12 angry men was a good example of the conformity experiment
9.0 on IMDB!
Making the same mistake in 2 out of 3 opportunities is usually fatal to further confidence. So just re-electing Trump was enough to trigger a steep decline in international trust in US governance. It is now in total free fall and a long way from bottom. US treasuries are just one point of vulnerability in a world that has been losing confidence in US political leadership for decades and has now decided that a major shift in political,military and economic alignments is inevitable.
I see it ultimately as an inevitable and needed shift: Economic, social and even military reality has changed significantly since 1945 or 1971, respectively. A multilateral world order is what many powers on the planet want to see, the US has a leader who is clearly a zero-sum-thinker and thought it would be a good idea to force the rest of the world - including closest allies - to choose between China and the US. The problem is, that the EU’s answer to that always has to be the US AND China. The US is a strong military and trading partner, the trade with China can’t be substituted though. The world is dependent on China’s magnets for instance - no German car without Chinese magnets, while the EU could substitute, Instagram, Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s though. I am sure that this strategy the US administration chose will come back and harm them more than was anticipated.