While Japan is the single largest holder of US treasury bonds with 1.2 trillion worth, the EU holds around 2 trillion spread across the member states, with about another 6 trillion held through the rest of the world - so around 9 trillion held outside the US. However, the total value of US treasury securities is around 38 trillion, with the largest holders being US domestic holders and the government itself. So only one quarter is held by "foreign" countries and investors.
I started looking into this recently after 
By his estimates, once the EU and China (they hold about 1 trillion) sold 10% of their holdings on the market, the US dollar would crash by up to 50% driving up prices on everything massively, plus of course the cost of the tariffs on top of that. Immense political disruption and social unrest would ensue.
Now, one of the perks of the US selling treasury bonds is that they can keep printing money to pay the interest, since they are priced in US dollars. That means that the US government can keep taking on more debt, without the risk of ever going bankrupt. As long as the rest of the world is willing to keep buying and holding an asset that keeps getting diluted. Every time the US borrows more money, they are diluting the pool of the investment. And the bonds are priced based on market volatility, the higher the volatility, the higher the risk and the more yield the market expects.
10-Year Treasury Yield: Around 4.2%
30-Year Treasury Yield: Around 4.8%
So what happens if the value of the US dollar was to plummet? Because that would mean that while it can pay the foreign holders in US dollars, the local value is significantly down once converted. Will the other foreign countries be willing to hold? I don't know, but it would cause a bit of drama. And in the US, with the majority of the debt value being hold by the public (about two-thirds) in mutual funds and pension funds and the like, it would mean that if everything went suddenly up in price, everyone has just got that much poorer.
Would this affect local social volatility you think?
And once this situation settles in and the chaos becomes daily life felt by everyone, the rest of the world needn't placate the US government anymore, needn't bow to the largest economy, because it would be the largest dumpster fire. And with so much volatility in the US dollar, which countries will be willing to continue using it as the reserve currency? It has been declining slowly for a while now, and this could be the nail in the coffin, which also explains the all-time highs on gold.
Economic sanctions as they are being used, don't do much to change the behaviour of sanctioned countries, if the country can keep the people within from rebelling. The problem the US might be facing in the coming years is that it can no longer placate the public, once the rest of the world stops placating the US government. Civil unrest has been growing for years, and while it started off as small fringe groups for the most part, now it is mainstreaming as more people realise that their freedoms were built on falsehoods, and they are actually having their freedoms taken away by the very government charged with improving their opportunity.
If you can imagine the current political and social environments and then overlay a hypothetical scenario where domestic prices increase 100-200% nearly overnight, with foreign investors unwilling to support the currency at all, and things might get pretty volatile indeed. The number of illegal immigrants would be the least of the concerns and the appetite for Greenland might be replaced by hunting the streets for scraps just to survive.
Of course, I am no expert in any of this, and haven't looked at bonds much before, nor their effects on the economy and society. However, I am interested in reducing centralised powers, especially of those who are coercive and malevolent. So, now I am interested in them and will continue on my little search with curiosity of possibility, toward a better outcome than we are currently subjected to.
Taraz
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