The Indicator from Planet Money - Can Europe sell America?

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

“Sell America.” There’s new talk of how Europe could turn the economic screws on the U.S. after President Trump’s play for Greenland. Selling U.S. Treasury bonds is one way. Another is a legal tool. It’s been called the EU’s bazooka.On today’s show, taking stock of Europe’s financial arsenal. How could America’s largest foreign lender lighten Americans’ wallets?Planet Money wrote a book and is going on tour, come see us: tickets and tour dates here. Related episodes: Davos drama, credit card caps and tariff truthsWhy Trump resurrected the Monroe DoctrineLunch with the man who coined TACOFor sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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NPR. The boiling of tensions in Europe over U.S. President Trump and Greenland have subsided to this somewhat uneasy simmer. But Europe is still on edge. Let's start with French President Emmanuel Macron last week on stage at Davos in his aviator sunglasses. The sunglasses were for an eye condition, by the way. Okay, yes, we need to be clear about that. And Mahon talked about the ways Europe could rest. respond to bullying by other countries.

Europe has very strong tools now, and we have to use them when we are not respected, and when the rule of the game are not respected, by the way. The anti-coercion mechanism is a powerful instrument, and we should not hesitate to deploy it in today's tough environment. The anti-coercion mechanism, sometimes called the EU's bazooka, this is a legal tool that the European Union could use to economically hit back at a country. Even without the anti-coercion mechanism activated, some in Europe are already changing their behavior. Last week, a Denmark teacher's pension announced it would sell off about $100 million of U.S. government bonds.

Down the hall in Davos, where U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant was speaking, he answered a question about this. Denmark's investment in U.S. treasury bonds like Denmark itself is irrelevant. Though the Danish pension fund's chief investment officer claimed it wasn't directly because of Greek. Greenland friction, the mood is clear to many Europeans, sell America. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darien Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on this show, what economic weaponry does Europe have? Europe is moving from friends to frenemies with the U.S. And so the continent is figuring out how to best pack a financial wallop that could lighten Americans' wallets.

To walk us through how Europeans are thinking through their financial firepower, we spoke to a Norwegian finance reporter. My name is Robin Wigglesworth, and I'm the editor of F.T. Alphaville, the F.T.'s finance blog. The Financial Times, the beautiful salmon-colored paper. Salmon, Beesk, pink. We've heard many shades over the years. So last week, Robin published an analysis of Europe's financial arsenal. He and his co-author responding to a research note that came out of Deutsche Bank. Somebody at Deutsche Bank had pointed out how much the U.S. relies on foreigners lending to it.

The note described how Europe is America's largest lender. And so the note pondered why Europe would want to be supporting the U.S. financially when it was being strong-armed around issues like Greenland. We asked Robin his assessment of whether Europe could inflict financial pain on the U.S. We started with trying to understand exactly what this anti-cogression mechanism means. Well, it's essentially sort of measures that can go beyond just trade tariffs. So they can be individual measures on companies. maybe banning access altogether, like maybe an extremist saying that Amazon can no longer operate in Europe, for example. So that's why they'd like to call it a bazooka. But of course, you know, the bazook is only

useful if you actually fire it. And that's the question with Europe, whether it has the willingness to really sort of go nuts with the anti-coercive measures. It's like a bazooker that has a big ricochet because it'll also affect Europeans. Yes. I mean, the idea behind them is that it should to maximize pain on the other side and minimize pain in Europe. But of course, you know, you can't minimize the pain entirely. It has an impact. For example, if you were to, let's say, ban X or Twitter as you speak, called, from operating in Europe, you know, Europeans lose services. Then there's obviously the danger of retaliation. With a failure of erratic president in the White House, Europeans are wary of escalating things in a way.

that might backfire in a very violent way. So the anti-coercion mechanism can go further than tariffs, but to my ear, Robin, seems a little skeptical that Europe's actually going to use it to great effect. I think that's fair. And that leads us to other ways Europe could squeeze the US. Like, Europe could sell off its US treasury bonds. We asked Robin how big a deal this could be.

Well, Europe is an old wealthy content. We forget this, but it's super rich. And they've saved up a lot of money. They export a lot. So they're invested in bonds and stock markets around the world, but nowhere more so than the United States. Around $3 trillion or so is in the treasury market. So that probably makes Europe the single biggest holder of treasuries in the world,

outside of the U.S. of course. Mainland China, by the way, holds less than $700 billion worth of U.S. treasuries, at least according to the official statistics. That's interesting. because historically sometimes there's been chatter around, you know, could China weaponise its U.S. treasury holdings? Never really crossed many people's minds that could Europe weaponize its U.S. treasury holdings, but you're saying it's actually of comparable, if not bigger size. Yeah, we're through the looking glass here.

These are things that we really didn't think we'd need ever to contemplate. But yes, as Europe kind of flails around for ways it can gain leverage in negotiations with the U.S., One of the things that some people have highlighted is this financial vulnerability in the United States, that the US is constantly dependent on money coming into the country, you know, from Europe and Asia, but especially Europe. So could that be weaponized? So let's look at that as a broader picture. Stocks, bonds, direct investment. Could Europe hurt the US by divesting from the US economy? It could.

Robin says it's helpful here to think about divestment that could happen in two separate ways. One, European investors just generally get less enthused about investing in the US. More pension plans, insurance companies and so on. Private investors think, do I really feel comfortable lending all this money into the US? Maybe not. Maybe I won't sell. Maybe I'll just stop buying more treasuries. And that could be a problem in itself. The second way Europe could sell America would be a big, dramatic law mandating this.

That's kind of the nuclear weapon. I'm skeptical just because it's immensely complicated. These US stocks and bonds aren't owned by the French government or the German government. Mostly it's like private banks in Switzerland, Dutch pension plans, insurance companies in the UK. You know, it's held in private sector hands, thousands, if not millions of investors. And the only way to get them to forcibly dump American treasuries or American stocks is by, you know, fairly draconian an action of laws and regulations across the European Union. And that's why it's very complicated. And the danger is, of course, by doing so, you'd be cutting off your nose despite your face. It would trash the value of these American assets and hurt, of course, European investors in the process.

Now, that might be feasible or even worth swallowing if hostilities keep rising. But right now, I think that's very far-fetched. Mutually assured destruction in Cold War terminology. Basically, yes. So, Dary, and it sounds like Robin basically poured cold water over the more extreme scenarios that were outlined in that Deutsche Bank note. Yeah, and so Robin found it a little odd when he heard Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lump him in with the Deutsche Bank note later in that Davos talk. This notion that Europeans would be selling U.S. assets came from a single, analyst at Deutsche Bank, of course, the fake news media, led by the Financial Times, amplified it.

Well, it's obviously great to hear that the U.S. Treasury Secretary is reading our articles, but I thought it was a little bit weird for him to call us the fake news media, when in this case we actually happen to agree with him. Right, because Robin did not think it was a major threat that Europeans would be selling a lot of U.S. treasuries. The subtitle of Robin Wigglesworth's article was Nipping an outlandish idea in the Bud. Oof, well, that public dressing down might explain why Deutsche Bank declined to comment to us. Now, I don't usually make light of people's names, but on your social media you have.

So tell me about your last name. So I am Norwegian. I'm born and raised here in Oslo, Norway, but my father's English, and Wigglesworth is an outrageously English name. I mean, even British people think it's a bit weird. It's more British than Britain. Exactly.