Macron is making up numbers. Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns. Profitable investment opportunities in the EU remain slim and so far they seem uninterested in pursuing a growth policy.
Canadian tourism visits to the US have dropped massively in the last year, not because Canadian tourist spots are better or more fun now (e.g. pure market forces), but again because of politics:
The EU has $8T invested in US assets. That's not an easy choice like a soccer mom choosing to go to the Caribbean instead of Florida for a weekend. It's very serious business that needs real alternatives.
Contrary to the implication, the Swedish fund that possibly sold $8b of its $100b worth of US Treasuries did not cite politics as its reason for doing so, and no part of the article backs up that claim. Additionally, selling out of the US dollar as the fed aimed to cut rates and as the dollar declined from historic highs against the Euro seems sensible regardless of politics.
Denmark has been exiting foreign bonds for 10 years, down from a high of $24b in 2016 to $10b in 2025. It’s not only part of a trend, but the cited $100m of bonds sold makes up a negligible 0.00026% of US treasuries.
On that note, 1 USD buys nearly $1.40 CAD.
Politics makes it easy to write stories that paint an incomplete or incorrect picture.
Unfortunately the US Dollar is devaluing. In the past year the dollar went down by 11%. That means SP 500 which has gone up 13% in the past year has only gone up 2% for a European.
It's a matter of perspective, for the US administration, that 11% drop is reason for celebration.
Their goal is to make American blue collar manufacturing jobs viable again, and part of the plan is to make it cheaper for other countries to buy their goods.
It's not the first time the dollar has been intentionally devalued.
> Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns.
You don't need to introduce capital controls to make it unattractive to invest in the US. There are plenty of options that the EU could pull that would make investments abroad very unpopular quickly.
Counter argument: people invest in bonds. Quite a lot of bonds in fact.
Picking up pennies in front of a steam roller and counterparty risk seem to be perennial favorites of youth, but I hazard to guess only a minority in the market have flesh yet untouched by fire.
Pension funds around these parts are big, we are often forced to pay into them.
Years ago, I noticed they started advertising green funds. Would not be surprised to see options that exclude the US too.
If you look at Trumps polls across EU countries, it is heavily in the negative and a lot of us are wanting to put our money where our mouth is about it.
Not really. Most EU countries don’t even have noticeable state pension funds (and one of the biggest culprits is actually France). They just rely on younger people to support the pensions of the retired ones.
Indeed it sounds a lot like Trump's bs, so Trump might buy it. It's almost like "those s**hole countries sending is their worst to eat our cats and dogs" or "subsidies we send every year to all over the world".
Except in a floating exchange rate that isn’t what happens. For somebody to leave the Eurozone for the Dollar zone there has to be somebody coming in the opposite direction to exchange with.
Macron is still talking nonsense of course. The Euros never left in the first place.
Let me fix that for you. This is all happening because the institutions in America failed to deliver for working-class people for over four decades, and Americans got fed up, elected a billionaire willing to be a bulldozer of those institutions and the systems that work for knowledge workers, twice.
Even the poorest EU countries are actually surprisingly wealthy.
Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarian deposits reached 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate is also very high(%86 IIRC).
The life is pretty good for a GDP per capita of $18K.
Home ownership can be a deceptive stat in Eastern Europe - many people don't register their address at the place they rent - in part because they're renting it under the table.
Tons of folks also live with their parents into their 30s.
The Europeans I know seem to save in actual bank savings accounts, whereas the Americans I know seem to invest their money. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I can't find a description of "savings" on those charts, so I think it might be ignoring American investments. To me, they are both types of investment, one a super safe option with a low return, and the other a more risky option with a higher return.
From that Draghi paper a year ago or so, I believe part of Europe's innovation problem seems to stem from a lack of private investment by individuals in this way, so that would also align with this different philosophy on dealing with savings.
There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe.
3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.
There is a very large and growing portion of the US that maintains no savings at all. In fact it's the opposite and many are slowly spending their way into perpetual credit card debt.
It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead).
Our public transportation infrastructure is so badly managed that many jobs will ask you if you have reliable transportation and fire you if you find yourself without it. If your car breaks here it's often not really a option to save up for a bit first.
that's true to some extent, but at this point it's mostly a meme (at least the 60% number was)
> In 2023, 54 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or “rainy day” fund—unchanged from 2022 but down from a high of 59 percent of adults in 2021.
I'd argue accumulating too much wealth compared to your salary can be a bad thing - for example, real estate compared to salary is even more expensive in Europe than the US - so the extra money doesn't go anywhere useful, you just get to pay more for the same stuff.
Also, if the US person pays less taxes, but has to pay for a bunch of services that the EU person would get for free, that means the US person has a lower savings rate, even though they're paying for the exact same stuff.
Retirement accounts are more like social security than 401k. There’s no set amount of euros set aside for me it’s all in the pool paying for older peoples retirement
The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. Sure, they can print more euro but when so much stuff they need is traded in USD, that's not nearly as effective as when the US prints more USD.
It's hard to overstate how much a beating the EU's reputation took after the Mercosur fiasco.
Lula took a massive political risk to push the EU-Mercosur FTA despite the power behind the throne in Brazil being wooed/bribed by the Trump admin [0] and already on the fence about the EU-Mercosur FTA because they are Ag Barons that primarily trade with the US and China [1] AND during a hotly contested election year.
This only makes the EU look like a less attractive negotiating partner, and incentivizes countries to unilaterally negotiate with individual EU states instead of the EU as a whole, thus undermining the entire EU.
If the EU alienates China, the US, Russia, Brazil, India, ASEAN, Japan, Korea, etc who else is left?
That is the whole crux of Carney and Zelenskyy's speeches at Davos.
> US is still unable to get a free trade deal with mercosur
Instead, we get an REE extraction deal in Brazil [2], financial backing for our current Venezuela escapade [0], and a president exporting Hispanic American-style far right politics into EU member states like Spain [3] and Italy [4] where right-leaning South Americans have become a major political voting bloc.
The more isolated the EU becomes, the easier it is for countries to begin taking advantage of European nations on their terms.
Edit:
The EU is now unfreezing and ratifying the US-EU trade deal [5]
What makes it more ridiculous, is that fact that we from the EU are shouting US is getting isolated, but some of the biggest economies in the world do not want to trade with 4 countries from the 3rd world, because we think will get bankrupt because of that.
I'm sure everyone would be happy to purchase stuff that respect our own standards. We forbid our farmers to use some chemicals because they are bad for health and nature, it would be completely stupid to start purchasing food abroad that is made using those chemicals, don't you agree?
> but some of the biggest economies in the world do not want to trade with 4 countries from the 3rd world,
It's this attitude that makes non-Europeans (especially those of us without European heritage) less sympathetic to European pleas of support, yet it's your politicians that try to sign a defense pacts with "third world countries" like India [0]
It's because of agriculture and us here in Europe losing our food-related resilience because of that. The tertiary sector won't save you in case of a continental blockade and the Argentinian/Brazilian grain suddenly becoming unavailable. "We'll go back to our farmers here in Europe!" Oops, you've just pushed them into bankruptcy a few years ago as a result of Mercosur, so good luck with that.
Why link to some reddit thread? I watched the video, and he described divestment from US bonds and equities. Those are easily some of the most desired, and consequently overvalued, securities on the planet. If European divestment actually exerts downward price pressure, that would mean ordinary Americans investing for retirement would be able to buy them up cheaper. Is that a bad thing? Also, it would mean Europeans would be less able to reap the benefit these corporations' profits and growth.
Readit News
https://www.reuters.com/business/swedish-pension-fund-alecta...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danish-pension-fund-treasuries-...
(And remember that India and China combined reduced their holdings of US treasures by at least $50B in 2025: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/amid-global-... )
Canadian tourism visits to the US have dropped massively in the last year, not because Canadian tourist spots are better or more fun now (e.g. pure market forces), but again because of politics:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20251211-where-are-all-th...
Denmark has been exiting foreign bonds for 10 years, down from a high of $24b in 2016 to $10b in 2025. It’s not only part of a trend, but the cited $100m of bonds sold makes up a negligible 0.00026% of US treasuries.
On that note, 1 USD buys nearly $1.40 CAD.
Politics makes it easy to write stories that paint an incomplete or incorrect picture.
https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/.DXY?qsearchterm=dollar%20index
The big move down happened March-June.
Their goal is to make American blue collar manufacturing jobs viable again, and part of the plan is to make it cheaper for other countries to buy their goods.
It's not the first time the dollar has been intentionally devalued.
This could be attractive depending on your view of the future of the US dollar and US stock market.
You don't need to introduce capital controls to make it unattractive to invest in the US. There are plenty of options that the EU could pull that would make investments abroad very unpopular quickly.
Picking up pennies in front of a steam roller and counterparty risk seem to be perennial favorites of youth, but I hazard to guess only a minority in the market have flesh yet untouched by fire.
Maybe. But they're allowed to avoid junk bonds and other "risky investments".
Deleted Comment
Is this investment advice?
Pension funds around these parts are big, we are often forced to pay into them. Years ago, I noticed they started advertising green funds. Would not be surprised to see options that exclude the US too.
If you look at Trumps polls across EU countries, it is heavily in the negative and a lot of us are wanting to put our money where our mouth is about it.
Not really. Most EU countries don’t even have noticeable state pension funds (and one of the biggest culprits is actually France). They just rely on younger people to support the pensions of the retired ones.
I doubt it will make any difference though, because Trump is about as brain damaged as they come.
Macron is still talking nonsense of course. The Euros never left in the first place.
Does that mean trade imbalances don’t exist?
So is Trump. This is all just response to bullying.
"I got big muscles"
"Oh yeah, I got big muscles too"
This all is happening because America elected a criminal clown, twice.
Dead Comment
Guessing that's somehow counting enforced deductions off paycheques. Would be a wild difference if not.
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/personal-savings
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings
Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarian deposits reached 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate is also very high(%86 IIRC).
The life is pretty good for a GDP per capita of $18K.
Tons of folks also live with their parents into their 30s.
From that Draghi paper a year ago or so, I believe part of Europe's innovation problem seems to stem from a lack of private investment by individuals in this way, so that would also align with this different philosophy on dealing with savings.
Which means it makes more financial sense to put the money into pensions accounts?
3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.
1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-e...
> In 2023, 54 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or “rainy day” fund—unchanged from 2022 but down from a high of 59 percent of adults in 2021.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-repor...
via
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-...
Also, if the US person pays less taxes, but has to pay for a bunch of services that the EU person would get for free, that means the US person has a lower savings rate, even though they're paying for the exact same stuff.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/date/2024/html/ecb.in2...
see also https://archive.md/xaiLU
"Europe’s AI ambitions are running into a markets plumbing problem
The region lacks the depth of long-dated investment capital needed to fund required energy infrastructure"
I wonder how much of EU savings is invested in foreign countries?
That only works if there are takers for US bonds otherwise all this will do is devalue the USD.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-emman...
Whose right fist struck as if by chance;
“Just an eye infection, come on!”> Savings and investments union
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/regulation-and-supervision/savi...
It's hard to overstate how much a beating the EU's reputation took after the Mercosur fiasco.
Lula took a massive political risk to push the EU-Mercosur FTA despite the power behind the throne in Brazil being wooed/bribed by the Trump admin [0] and already on the fence about the EU-Mercosur FTA because they are Ag Barons that primarily trade with the US and China [1] AND during a hotly contested election year.
This only makes the EU look like a less attractive negotiating partner, and incentivizes countries to unilaterally negotiate with individual EU states instead of the EU as a whole, thus undermining the entire EU.
If the EU alienates China, the US, Russia, Brazil, India, ASEAN, Japan, Korea, etc who else is left?
That is the whole crux of Carney and Zelenskyy's speeches at Davos.
> US is still unable to get a free trade deal with mercosur
Instead, we get an REE extraction deal in Brazil [2], financial backing for our current Venezuela escapade [0], and a president exporting Hispanic American-style far right politics into EU member states like Spain [3] and Italy [4] where right-leaning South Americans have become a major political voting bloc.
The more isolated the EU becomes, the easier it is for countries to begin taking advantage of European nations on their terms.
Edit:
The EU is now unfreezing and ratifying the US-EU trade deal [5]
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-18/brazil-s-...
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/d293237e-e39f-4f4c-89e7-4c52cf937...
[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/401a9e84-3034-4375-bf39-56b92500c...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-far-right-vox-ho...
[4] - https://cebri.org/revista/en/artigo/172/javier-milei-and-the...
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/eu-plans-...
It's this attitude that makes non-Europeans (especially those of us without European heritage) less sympathetic to European pleas of support, yet it's your politicians that try to sign a defense pacts with "third world countries" like India [0]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/eu-proceed-security-defe...
Also why is he wearing sunglasses?
The glasses are due to eye redness.