BRICS: China’s $74 Billion Purge of U.S. Treasuries

BRICS member China is dumping billions worth of US treasuries as the Communist nation is looking to abandon the dollar. The US Treasury Department published the latest data that shows China offloading nearly $74 billion in treasuries in 2023 alone. The development adds pressure on the economy at a time when BRICS aims to end reliance on the US dollar. 

Read here to know how many sectors in the US will be affected if BRICS ditches the dollar for trade. China decreased its US Treasury holdings from $849 billion to $775 billion between Q2 of 2023 to Q2 of 2024. Therefore, BRICS country China dumped a staggering $74 billion in US treasuries in the last 12 months. It has now reached its lowest holdings since 2009 at the time BRICS was formed.

China & Other BRICS Countries Dumping US Treasuries

Apart from China. other BRICS countries have also dumped billions worth of US treasuries since 2023. India sold $1.4 billion worth of US treasuries while Brazil came second offloading $1.2 billion during the same period. The yet-to-be BRICS member Saudi Arabia has also dumped $0.3 billion worth of US treasuries in the last four quarters.

The move indicates that BRICS and other developing countries no longer find the option of US treasuries lucrative. They are moving further away from the US economy and focusing on building their native currencies and economies. “We are starting to see a flight from the dollar,” said Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“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,” he summed it up.

This article originally appeared on Watcher.Guru