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Graphic Truth

This Graphic Truth lays bare how a party in political freefall has roared back to life.

Annie Gugliotta

Despite the two parties narrowing by a point in the polls since they released their platforms this past week, looking at the arc of the race overall, it appears that the Conservatives peaked too early and the Liberals have made an impressive resurgence.

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Paige Fusco & Ari Winkleman / GZERO Media

The US is the world’s biggest debtor, with more than $35 trillion of securities outstanding.

About a quarter of that is held by foreign investors, a detail which has drawn considerable attention since Donald Trump began walloping the world with tariffs to rebalance US trade ties and military alliances. That’s because if countries upset – or merely uneasy – about Trump’s policies sell those securities in response, the debt servicing costs for the US rise. This is no small matter on $35 trillion worth of paper.

In fact, one widely held explanation for Trump’s abrupt suspension of the “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 9 was that wary bond investors had begun to sell US Treasuries: In the week of April 11, yields on 10-year US treasuries saw their biggest leap in a quarter of a century, a sign that creditors were dropping US sovereign debt fast.

Could countries weaponize US debt more directly? China, Trump’s biggest trade war target, is the second largest foreign US creditor, officially holding more than $750 billion.

A selloff could be devastating. But analysts say it would be hard to find enough buyers for a sale that is both swift and large enough to catch the US off guard.

And even if it were possible, a seller would risk their own financial security as well global economic health by kneecapping the US. In other words: It would be, in financial terms, the nuclear option.

The graphic above looks at which countries hold the most US sovereign debt. Note that the last official data precede “Liberation Day” and that they depend on official reporting. Some countries may hold more than what is listed here via third parties.

Paige Fusco

Since returning to office in January, US President Donald Trump has brought sweeping reductions to the federal workforce, firing or otherwise facilitating the departures of more than 200,000 government employees. It’s a stark contrast from the start of his first administration, when firings were more limited to high-ranking officials.

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US-China trade from 1985-2024

Luisa Vieira

Hard as it is to imagine amid the harrowing US-China trade war these days, there was a time when the two countries hardly did any business with each other.

That time was about 40 years ago, in the mid-1980s.

In those days, China had just barely begun the sweeping economic reforms that would turn a country wrecked by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution into a new “workshop of the world.” By churning out exports of everything from sneakers and sofas to smartphones and solar panels, China carved out a crucial role in the global economy.

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Paige Fusco & Ari Winkleman / GZERO Media

The trade war between the US and China is already scorching hot. As of this writing, the US has slapped tariffs of 145% on all Chinese goods, while Beijing has hit the US with a 125% levy of its own.

Much attention has focused on the tariff impact on Chinese exporters and US consumers – fair enough, given that China is the second largest source of US imports.

But US industries also sold more than $140 billion worth of goods to China last year – with agricultural goods (soy beans especially), electronic equipment, and oil and gas among the top exports.

Here’s a look at the ten US states that exported the most to China, along with estimates of how many jobs were supported by that commerce.

Line graphs comparing inflation to wages in the US and Canada.

Ari Winkleman
Real wages (nominal wages minus inflation) in the United States have been stagnating for decades, a consequence of policy changes, automation, and lower geographical mobility. Even when real US wages were starting to rise in the wake of the pandemic, high inflation rates quickly wiped out those gains.
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An infographic of the changes to the US voting system under Trump's executive order

Paige Fusco

Officials from the Democratic Party in 19 states have filed a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s efforts to alter the national voting process via an executive order entitled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which they argue infringes upon states’ constitutional rights to manage their elections. The Trump administration argues that it is necessary to ensure election security.

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