I use to follow this report regularly. More recently I have tried several times to find it in the old form of a CSV file that I would open in Excel. I did a more thorough search today and discovered that they only publish an HTML format now. This is done in a monthly press release. The dates of release are found in a table at Release Dates of TIC Data. You want the date in the column titled “also: data on holdings of long-term securities (monthly)”. An archive of TIC data can be found at ARCHIVES.
The current TIC data can be found here: Major Foreign Holders of U.S. Treasury Securities (MFH table). The reported data lags by two months. For example, today is June 09, 2024. The last data release was May 15, 2024/ The data covers one year up to and including March, 2024. With the new data format I cannot resize columns. Here is that current data:
To better read this, click the link in the preceding paragraph.
China ‘Dumping’ Treasuries
I have been hearing this charge for many years. People go into panic mode and use this data to announce the end of the Petrodollar system. For many years, China’s holdings were relatively steady at around $1.1 trillion. From the table we see that China has reduced its holdings by $102 billion over the last year. Russia sold all their holdings years ago as the US began attacking them with sanctions. China is likely beginning to follow suit as US war rhetoric heats up.
China’s portfolio of Treasuries could hold maturities from a few months to 30 years. This means that every month, a portion of their portfolio matures. In the past this debt was rolled over. Now they may be taking the cash payout instead without having to sell a single Treasury instrument.
Japan is now the largest older of US debt and Canada is in fifth place. Both have increased their holdings by $100 billion or more.
These are foreign holdings of US debt. If you look at the ‘Grand Total’ line, you will see that the total debt held by foreigners for the year has actually increased by $45 billion. So the dollar is not threatened by foreign debt.
Gold as a Tier 1 Asset
Recently the Basel III agreement (read: Basel III and the Gold Market) reclassified gold as a tier 1 asset. This puts it on the same level as US Treasuries without the risk of default or inflationary destruction. This means that gold may be included in a country’s foreign exchange reserves.
China has been one of the largest buyers of gold in recent years. Canada remains a ‘barbarous relic’ by having sold its gold and not made any move to replenish it. The rational thing would be to immediately turn half their Treasuries into gold.
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