The New York Times this week declared that “The World Economy Is Becoming Wary of the U.S.,” blaming President Trump for what it described as a shakier American position on the world stage — global investors supposedly balking at U.S. bonds, louder talk of the dollar’s declining power, and foreign governments hauling gold out of American vaults.
But a Breitbart Business Digest published Thursday argues that the actual money tells a very different story — one in which the rest of the world keeps buying American assets at a record pace, and no credible alternative to the dollar has emerged.
The numbers behind the narrative
According to Treasury data released Wednesday, foreigners purchased a net $1.75 trillion in long-term American securities over the 12 months through July, Breitbart reported. That is up from $1.47 trillion in the prior 12-month period and more than double the roughly $799 billion purchased in the comparable stretch ending July 2024, which the outlet characterized as Biden’s final year in office.
Breaking those purchases down shows a shift away from government debt and toward private-sector securities, according to the Breitbart analysis. In the 12 months through July 2024, foreign investors sold a net $151.5 billion of U.S. stocks while buying $540.7 billion in Treasury notes and bonds, $306 billion in corporate bonds, and $103.4 billion in agency bonds.
In the following 12 months, foreigners flipped to net buyers of $598.1 billion in stocks, alongside $456 billion in Treasuries, $341.1 billion in corporate bonds, and $73.4 billion in agency bonds. By the 12 months through July 2026, stock purchases hit $941.9 billion and corporate-bond purchases climbed to $452 billion, while Treasury purchases slowed to $246.6 billion and agency purchases reached $114 billion.
Rather than a retreat, Breitbart frames the progression as foreign money rushing toward U.S. equities and corporate debt — a bet on American business rather than a flight from it.
What rising yields actually signal
The Times pointed to the 10-year Treasury yield climbing above five percent as evidence that investors nervous about mounting national debt are demanding higher returns. Breitbart calls that interpretation backwards.
The timeline doesn’t fit, the outlet argues: debt projections are not meaningfully higher than at the start of the year, when the 10-year yield sat near four percent, so there’s little reason investors would suddenly grow anxious about a fiscal path that has been visible for years.
More fundamentally, Breitbart says the logic of bond yields is inverted. Rising yields in the short and medium term typically reflect economic confidence, while falling yields can signal distress — as during the financial crisis and the pandemic, when yields plunged for years. What markets are seeing now, the outlet contends, is a return to non-crisis yields.
Breitbart also notes that if investors feared Washington would inflate away its debts, that worry should show up in inflation compensation. Instead, the inflation-adjusted yield on the 10-year Treasury reached 2.62 percent on Tuesday while the market’s measure of expected inflation over the next decade stood at 2.33 percent Wednesday — real yields rising even as inflation expectations stayed anchored.
The outlet credits the yield move to optimism about growth and corporate profits, pointing to strong private investment and a booming artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout. Capital simply costs more when investors have attractive things to finance, the argument goes, driving portfolio shifts toward risk assets like stocks and corporate bonds and away from risk-free Treasuries.
Reserve data and the Norway example
Concerns about central banks holding fewer dollars also fall apart under scrutiny, according to Breitbart, which cites a New York Fed analysis finding that the decline in the dollar’s share of reserves was concentrated among a few large holders. Across 62 countries with complete data for 2019–2023, active portfolio decisions actually increased dollar allocations slightly.
Most of the reduction comes from China and Russia, the outlet says — Russia because sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine cut it off from global trade and dollar-denominated markets, and China because Trump’s trade policies pushed it to find buyers elsewhere for its excess production. That, Breitbart argues, is a consequence of U.S. policy rather than a rejection of America.
Norway offered what Breitbart called an especially comic example of the Times misreading the data. The Times cited Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, as planning to reduce U.S. Treasury holdings while looking elsewhere for stronger returns. But the fund’s managers actually proposed replacing some Treasuries with other bonds — including American mortgage securities — leaving dollar exposure roughly unchanged, from about 52.9 percent of the bond benchmark to about 52.5 percent.
Those mortgage securities are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage guarantors that have been wards of the state since 2008, making their bonds effectively another form of Treasuries, according to the Breitbart analysis. The corporate bonds the fund could buy are bets on U.S. economic strength. Norway, in other words, isn’t looking elsewhere — it’s looking for better returns inside the universe of American securities.
Gold, meanwhile, tells a similarly inconvenient story, Breitbart writes. Governments and central banks have been buying the metal precisely because the yen, yuan, and euro are not credible substitutes for the dollar — a remarkable testament to America’s financial position, since countries with falling dollar surpluses still can’t find another government’s currency to hold in reserve.
The Times’ specific claim that gold has “overtaken” official Treasury holdings is a price effect, the outlet says. The European Central Bank paper behind the comparison puts gold at about 27 percent of official reserves and Treasuries at about 22 percent at end-2025 market prices — but the same paper attributes the shift largely to valuation. Restore gold to its end-2023 price and the ranking flips: Treasuries at about 26 percent, with gold and the euro around 16 percent each. Ounces rose; the share explosion reflects a $5,000 gold price.
Taken together, Breitbart’s reading of the data is that the dollar remains king — and that the world’s appetite for American private-sector assets is stronger than ever.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/09/17/breitbart-business-digest-the-dollar-is-still-king/