China has sold more than $74 billion in US Treasuries in the last year, according to new numbers from the Treasury Department.
China has decreased its Treasuries holdings from $849 billion to $775 billion between the beginning of Q2 2023 and Q2 2024, reaching its lowest holdings since 2009.
Other countries let go of small amounts of Treasuries holdings over the last quarter, with India selling $1.4 billion, Brazil unloading $1.2 billion, and Saudi Arabia shedding $0.3 billion.
The new data come as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Russia and China have almost completely stopped using the dollar in their mutual trade.
According to Lavrov, more than 90% of settlements between the countries are now carried out in their own national currencies, with their economic cooperation accelerating “despite persistent attempts by Western countries to prevent this,” as per Bloomberg.
Lavrov said last year that CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), or countries formerly part of the Soviet Union, have grown their trade flows by a sizeable chunk without complying with the US’ demands.
“We are starting to see a flight from the dollar. So far, it is not all that swift, but it is sure to accelerate. In fact, this trend is irreversible. The US has already, for real, sawed off the tree limb that it was perched on, managing global financial flows and the world economy as a whole by leveraging the dollar’s dominant role…
Despite the threats that our partners have received from the US and the European Union not to cooperate with the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus under pain of so-called secondary sanctions and other penalties, trade flows across the CIS are growing. [Trade] edged up by more than six percent last year, amounting to over $100 billion.”
Lavrov, who was appointed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2004, says that CIS countries are already working toward further agreements that will “give an impetus for further expansion of economic interaction.”
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