Canada Held Record Amount of US Treasury Securities In March of 2025

"Elbows up" was the popular catchphrase that helped Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and former Governor of the Bank of England, become Canada's new Prime Minister in April of 2025.

After President Donald Trump and the United States slapped tariffs on Canada, most Canadians were enraged and wanted to retaliate as strongly as they possibly could. Canadians decided that Mark Carney was the person to lead their response, and the "Elbows Up" catchphrase (which refers to an aggressive style of play in hockey where you are looking to be physical with the opposing team) was born.

In fact, a popular "story" was circulated before the election on social media that helped to boost Carney in the eyes of voters. This story, which was viewed by millions of Canadians, was complete fiction.

In this story, Mark Carney organized a group of countries, including Japan and others.

According to the writer of this story, Carney convinced these other countries to start dumping their holdings of US Treasuries in advance of Carney's March phone conversation with President Trump.

In this conversation, the writer continues, Carney informed the President that a number of countries had started dumping their US bonds, and that they would continue until the President pumped the breaks on his tariff plan.

The story even makes the claim that Carney saw this situation with the United States coming and loaded up on US debt in the months before President Trump even took office.

Carney, they said, stared down the President and made him blink.

Aside from the obvious issues with the story (Prime Ministers in Canada don't determine how the Bank of Canada's holdings are managed, Carney wasn't even sworn in as Prime Minister until March, leaders of other countries also have no say on how their central banks manage holdings of foreign debt), the numbers simply don't back it up.

In fact, Canadian holdings of US debt have soared over the past few months.

In March of 2025, Canada added an additional $20.1 billion in US Treasury securities to bring their total to $426.2 billion, which is an all-time record.

Since December of 2024, Canadian holdings of US debt is up 12.5% from $378.8 billion to $426.2 billion.

Canada holds a record amount of US debt, despite the fact that Canada was supposedly dumping their holdings in March.

The countries that were reportedly part of Carney's group - Japan, United Kingdom, France - have all significantly increased their holdings of US debt so far in 2025.

At the time, US bonds were making a big move and the believers in this story pointed to it as validation that the story of a Carney-led group of pissed-off countries that were dumping US debt was true.

Analysts said that it was likely not countries dumping their debt, but instead the unwinding of a popular carry trade involving US Treasuries. They ended up being right.

Carney and President Trump were quite friendly in their first face-to-face meeting at the White House. If Prime Minister Carney had really threatened President Trump with the coordinated dumping of US debt, do you think that the two men would have been so friendly. President Trump doesn't seem like the type that responds well to threats, but maybe I'm wrong.



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