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Japanese investors offloaded more than $20bn in international bonds as Donald Trump’s tariffs shook markets early this month, in a sign of how the Wall Street turbulence cascaded around the world.
Private institutions, including banks and pension funds, sold $17.5bn of long-dated foreign bonds in the week to April 4 and another $3.6bn over the next seven days, according to preliminary data from Japan’s Ministry of Finance.
Japan holds $1.1tn in US Treasuries across the public and private sectors — the biggest international stockpile in the world — so its transactions are closely monitored and considered a proxy for buying or selling of US government debt.
The recent sell-off marks one of the biggest outflows over any two-week period since records began in 2005.
The shift out of international bonds came…
