Stellantis was hanging on by a thread. This would kill them dead.
Say good bye to your Jeeps, MAGAts…
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And ta ta to Tata.
(What the hell do they make?)
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I think Jaguar and Land Rover? They did at some point.
ETA: Yes, their US-bound products are all Jaguar and Land Rover. And Tata motors could be in trouble but Tata the global multinational conglomerate is going to do just fine. It’s massive and diversified.
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As a Jeep owner, their quality has been going down for years, especially since they became Stellantis. Wouldn’t mind seeing them go away.
Always a little shocked when I see Tata show up. First interacted with them as an IT hiring manager and was shocked when I found out how massive they were later in an economics class.
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I see they’re a huge Indian company. Kind of ironic that their brands include Jaguar and Land Rover.
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From my economics class, more or less they were THE Indian company. To the point of government control and more, much like Samsung in Korea.
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Deliciously ironic!
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Clever Carney, if this is true. The piece as a whole sounds kinda hagiographic to me.
Good explainer also of how and why countries buy and sell US bonds.
While Trump was gearing up his trade war machine, 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, part of the $8.53 trillion foreign countries hold in U.S. debt. On the surface, it looked like a safe play, a hedge against economic chaos. But it wasn’t just defense. It was a loaded gun.
Carney didn’t stop there. 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. The pitch was simple: if Trump went too far with tariffs, Canada wouldn’t just retaliate with duties on American cars or steel. It would start offloading those Treasury bonds. Not a fire sale—nothing so crude. A slow, steady bleed. A signal to the markets that the U.S. dollar’s perch wasn’t so secure.
This was the determining factor in Trump’s surrender. Not the public spats, not the retaliatory tariffs Canada slapped on U.S. autos (though those stung). It was the quiet, coordinated threat of a Treasury bond unwind that bent Trump’s knee. Carney didn’t need to shout. He didn’t need to posture. He lined up the free world—Japan, the EU, Canada in lockstep—and showed Trump the cliff’s edge. Strategic brilliance doesn’t get louder than that.
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They also are talking about bonds in the Australian media, though more about Japan than Canada.
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Yeah. Japan is the largest holder of those bonds.
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If this was Carney, then that’s a double win for him. Being seen as the co-ordinator of this move will increase Canada’s standing with its allies in Asia and Europe, and sends out a very clear signal to the Canadian electorate just before the election, that it’s a good idea to have someone with his experience in economics in charge of Canada, as opposed to little PP who will roll over for trump.
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Neato. I was today years old when I learned that the answer to that question is “Japan”, not “China”.
ETA: The timing makes me believe the bonds were possibly the deciding factor in the backflip - the announcements from the WH went from “They’re kissing my ass…” to “We’re putting a 90-day hold…” very very quickly. What I don’t understand is “why?”. What is it about the bond market that made things happen when the stock market tumbling did not? Did it upset Peter Navarro? 
ETAA: The nyt (yes, I know) points out how rumbling in the bonds market led to TPTB telling Liz Truss her time as PM was over.
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I don’t know who got to Tramp and changed his mind so quickly, but if the piece I linked above is right, multiple countries calling in bonds all at once would quickly cause all kinds of tremendously bad effects in the US economy. As for central US financial reserves, a lot of that happening much more quickly than it did yesterday would be similar to a lot of a bank’s depositors demanding their money all at once (which a bank normally can’t handle).
How it works beyond that is too much for me to summarize here, but that writer explains it all well, and quickly. It’s good to gather that the world does have some power over the US this way, power it can exercise collectively when an administration starts threatening and upsetting global stability.
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My son and I were having this conversation with a slightly different context a couple of weeks ago.
A country like the US that mints its own fiat currency can, hypothetically, pay down any debt and bonds, even the $30T or so that the US has accumulated, by simply printing money. Ideally, this would be done gradually. One could even change currency so that outstanding cash that is in problematic hands (~$3T in $100 bills held by countries like Iran and North Korea) can be just wiped out of existence. But all at once? Only if it’s acceptable to essentially destroy the currency and it’s value permanently.
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The short answer is, obviously, Luxembourg.
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It’s all pretty confusing. But as I understand it; when bonds lose value banks can fail. Their balance sheets are worth less and they can’t meet their capital requirements.
Also - if stocks are down and bonds go down at the same time - rich people got no safe haven to run to.
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Immer.
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But what happens when we have UBI because machines have taken over all the jobs?
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