Business
Trump’s Tariff War Has Added Risk to U.S. Bonds, Long the Surest Bet in Global Finance
There are not many certainties in the world of money, but this traditionally has been one of them: When life turns scary, people take refuge in American government bonds.
Investors buy U.S. Treasuries on the assumption that, come what may — financial panic, war, natural disaster — the federal government will endure and stand by its debts, making its bonds the closest thing to a covenant with the heavens.
Yet turmoil in bond markets last week revealed the extent to which President Trump has shaken faith in that basic proposition, challenging the previously unimpeachable solidity of U.S. government debt. His trade war — now focused intently on China — has raised the prospect of a worldwide economic downturn while damaging American credibility as a responsible steward of peace and prosperity.
“The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing,” said Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University and co-author of the forthcoming book “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers.”
An erosion of faith in the governance of the world’s largest economy appears at least in part responsible for the sharp sell-off in the bond market in recent days. When large numbers of investors sell bonds at once, that forces the government to offer higher interest rates to entice others to buy its debt. And that tends to push up interest rates throughout the economy, increasing payments for mortgages, car loans and credit card balances.
Last week, the yield on the closely watched 10-year Treasury bond soared to roughly 4.5 percent from just below 4 percent — the most pronounced spike in nearly a quarter century. At the same time, the value of the American dollar has been falling, even as tariffs would normally be expected to push it up.
Other elements also go into the explanation for the bond sell-off. Hedge funds and other financial players have sold holdings as they exit a complex trade that seeks to profit from the gap between existing prices for bonds and bets on their future values. Speculators have been unloading bonds in response to losses from plunging stock markets, seeking to amass cash to stave off insolvency.
Some fear that China’s central bank, which commands $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, including $761 billion in U.S. Treasury debt, could be selling as a form of retaliation for American tariffs.
Given the many factors playing out at once, the sharp increase in yields for government bonds registers as something similar to when medical patients learn that their red blood cell count is down: There may be many reasons for the drop, but none of them are good.
One reason appears to be an effective downgrading of the American place in global finance, from a safe haven to a source of volatility and danger.
As Mr. Blyth put it, Treasury bills have devolved from so-called information invariant assets — rock-solid investments regardless of the news — to “risk assets” that are vulnerable to getting sold when fear seizes the market.
The Trump administration has championed tariffs in the name of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States, asserting that a short-term period of turbulence will be followed by long-term gains. But as most economists describe it, global trade is being sabotaged without a coherent strategy. And the chaotic way in which tariffs have been administered — frequently announced and then suspended — has undercut confidence in the American system.
For years, economists have worried about an abrupt drop in the willingness of foreigners to buy and hold United States government debt, yielding a sharp and destabilizing increase in American interest rates. By many indications, that moment may be unfolding.
“People feel nervous about lending us money,” said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan. “They are saying, ‘We’ve lost our faith in America and the American economy.’”
For Americans, that reassessment threatens to revoke a unique form of privilege. Because the United States has long served as the global economy’s safe harbor, the government has reliably found takers for its debt at lower rates of interest. That has pulled down the cost of mortgages, credit card balances and auto loans. And that has allowed American consumers to spend with relative abandon.
At the same time, foreigners buying dollar-denominated assets pushed up the value of the American currency, making products imported to the United States cheaper in dollar terms.
Critics have long argued that this model is both unsustainable and destructive. The flow of foreign money into dollar assets has permitted Americans to gorge on imports — a boon to consumers, retailers and financiers — while sacrificing domestic manufacturing jobs. Chinese companies have gained dominance in key industries, making Americans dependent on a faraway adversary for vital goods like basic medicines.
“The U.S. dollar’s role as the primary safe currency has made America the chief enabler of global economic distortions,” the economist Michael Pettis wrote last week in an opinion piece in The Financial Times.
But economists inclined to that view generally prescribe a gradual process of adjustment, with the government embracing so-called industrial policy to encourage the development of new industries. This thinking animated the Biden administration’s economic policy, which included some tariffs against Chinese industry to protect American companies while they gained time to achieve momentum in industries like clean energy technology.
Encouraging American industry requires investment, which itself demands predictability. Mr. Trump has warned companies that the only way to avoid his tariffs is to set up factories in the United States, while lifting trade protectionism to levels not seen in more than a century.
Even an abrupt decision from the White House to pause most tariffs on all trading partners except China failed to dislodge the sense that a new era is underway — one in which the United States must be viewed as a potential rogue actor.
That Mr. Trump does not bow to diplomatic decorum is hardly new. His Make America Great Again credo is centered on the notion that, as the world’s largest economy, the United States has the power to impose its will.
Yet the pullback in the bond market attests to shock at how far this principle has been extended. Mr. Trump has broken with eight decades of faith in the benefits of global trade: economic growth, lower-priced consumer goods and a reduced risk of war.
That the gains of trade have been spread unequally now amounts to a truism among economists. Anger over joblessness in industrial communities helped bring Mr. Trump to power, while altering the politics of trade. But many economists say the trade war is likely to further damage American industrial fortunes.
The tariffs threaten existing jobs at factories that depend on imported parts to make their products. The levies have been set at rates seemingly plucked at random, economists said.
“What the market really didn’t like was the random crazy math of the tariffs,” said Simon Johnson, a Nobel laureate economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It seemed like they didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t care. It’s a whole new level of madness.”
The immediate consequence of higher interest rates on United States bonds is an increase in what the federal government must pay creditors to keep current on its debts. That cuts into funds available for other purposes, from building schools to maintaining bridges.
The broader effects are harder to predict, yet could metastasize into a recession. If households are forced to pay more for mortgages and credit card bills, they will presumably limit spending, threatening businesses large and small. Companies would then forgo hiring and expanding.
The chaos in the bond market is at once an indicator that investors see signs of this negative scenario already unfolding, and is itself a cause of future distress via higher borrowing rates.
For years, foreign holders of American bonds have sought to diversify into other storehouses for savings. Still, the dollar and U.S. government bonds have maintained their status as the ultimate repository.
Europe and its common currency, the euro, now seem enhanced as a part of the global financial realm still subject to adult supervision. But Germany’s staunch reluctance to issue debt has limited the availability of bonds for investors seeking another place to entrust savings.
That may now change, suggested Mr. Blyth, the Brown economist. “If the Europeans decide to issue a ‘sanity bond,’ the world might jump at it,” he said.
The Chinese government has long sought to elevate the place of its currency, the renminbi. But foreign investors hardly view China as a paragon of transparency or rule of law, limiting its utility as an alternative to the United States.
All of which leaves the world in a bewildering place. The old sanctuary no longer seems so safe. Yet no other place looks immediately capable of standing in.
Business
10 years since Aliso Canyon: Disaster was wake-up call for U.S. on dangers of underground gas
On an evening 10 years ago, Porter Ranch resident Matt Pakucko stepped out of his music studio and was walloped by the smell of gas — like sticking your head in an oven, he recalled.
Pakucko called the fire department. It turned out crews had already been up to the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in the Santa Susana Mountains behind the neighborhood, responding to a report of a leak. Many of his neighbors were beginning to feel ill, reporting issues such as heart palpitations, vomiting, burning eyes and bloody noses.
“I swear I thought I was standing behind a 747 with its engines blowing — it was not just gas, it was oil smell, it was chemical smell that permeated,” recalled Pakucko, who went on to co-found the advocacy group Save Porter Ranch. “I couldn’t stay out there for 30 seconds. It tasted like f— gasoline.”
Soon it was clear that this wasn’t just a leak — it was a blowout. Over the course of 112 days, the Aliso Canyon facility would spew an estimated 120,000 tons of methane and toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. It was the worst natural-gas well blowout in U.S. history, and an environmental disaster whose effects will be unpacked for generations.
The event was widely seen as a wake-up call to the dangers of methane and underground natural gas storage. Methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas, is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for about a quarter of all the human-caused climate change we are experiencing. A study published by UCLA researchers last month found that women in their final trimester of pregnancy who were living within 6.2 miles downwind of the blowout in 2015 had a nearly 50% higher-than-expected chance of having a low birth-weight baby.
The blowout ushered in a wave of new regulations to strengthen the governance of natural gas storage facilities in California and the United States, as well as new tools and technology to monitor methane emissions.
But 10 years later, some Porter Ranch residents say the wounds still feel fresh, and too many promises have been broken. After the disaster, then-Gov. Jerry Brown called for the permanent closure of Aliso Canyon by 2027 — a goal his successor, Gavin Newsom, called a top priority and vowed to meet even sooner.
Instead, Aliso Canyon remains open, with regulators voting in December to continue using the facility for years — probably into the 2030s — citing the need for natural gas to help maintain affordable energy rates and grid reliability in California.
The facility is a key asset for Southern California Gas. In an emailed statement, the company said the state would struggle to meet electricity demand without Aliso Canyon’s storage. The site fuels 17 power plants and helps keep the lights on during the hours that can’t yet be met by solar, wind and other renewable resources, the company said. Natural gas still represents about 40% of the state’s electricity supply.
“There’s a lot of work to do to get off natural gas and oil in California,” said Adam Peltz, senior attorney with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “That work is underway, but it’s not complete. If you’ve built an economy on fossil fuels, it takes awhile to get off of it.”
Aliso Canyon was originally drilled as an oil field in the late 1930s before SoCalGas converted it to natural gas storage in the early 1970s. Utilities often use played out crude oil fields as places to pump gas downward under pressure and hold it until it is needed.
Aliso Canyon is one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the U.S.
In the lead-up to the blowout, SoCalGas was filling the site in preparation for the winter heating season. Crews were using tremendous force to pump gas down a well that was more than 60 years old. But a metal casing on well SS-25 had corroded, and gas began blowing out at very high volumes.
Methane is not visible to the naked eye, but aerial images captured with infrared cameras and released by the Environmental Defense Fund showed a geyser-like eruption of the flammable, climate changing gas — making it clear to the whole world the magnitude of the disaster.
Matt Pakucko, right, founder of Save Porter Ranch, and other protesters against SoCalGas hold a rally at the intersection of Tampa Avenue and Rinaldi Street on Sept. 28, 2021, in Porter Ranch.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
It took nearly four months for crews to stop the leak. By that time, damage was done. More than 8,000 households were temporarily displaced, businesses were shut down, and two schools were relocated for several months.
Researchers are still working to unpack the health outcomes of the event. SoCalGas, meanwhile, has paid about $2 billion in settlements and agreed to operate the facility at a lower maximum pressure.
Officials with the gas company said they have shored up the facility, including replacing the inner steel tubing on all operating wells and conducting continuous ambient methane monitoring. All wells at the site are subject to real-time pressure readings and visual inspections four times a day, among other protocols, SoCalGas said.
“Over the past 10 years, SoCalGas has conducted comprehensive safety reviews and implemented multiple safety layers that protect one of California’s most important assets for energy reliability and affordability,” the company said.
While the maximum allowable operating pressure at the site remains reduced — about 3,183 pounds per square inch compared with 3,600 pounds per square inch in 2015 — state officials recently voted to let SoCalGas increase storage at the facility to 68.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas from 41 billion cubic feet, outraging many in the community.
But experts say there are silver linings to the disaster. California overhauled its underground natural gas storage regulations to make them the strongest in the nation and among the strongest in the world, according to Peltz, of the Environmental Defense Fund. The changes include more thoughtful rules for well construction, better monitoring and risk management, and improved planning and emergency response.
Congress reacted to the disaster by requiring its regulatory agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to issue safety standards for natural gas storage nationwide. In 2016, it adopted best practices recommended by the American Petroleum Institute, which were strengthened at the beginning of this month.
Many states with natural gas storage previously had no regulations at all, Peltz said.
“On a national basis, the systems will be safer as a result of that change,” he said.
There have been technological advancements too. The infrared aerial recording of the leak captured in 2015 was a relatively new technique at the time, but has now become commonplace. The California Air Resources Board conducted its first large-scale statewide aerial methane survey in 2016, identifying many of the largest methane sources in the state.
There have also been considerable advancements in the ability to observe methane super-emitters through satellites and remote sensors, according to Seth Shonkoff, executive director at the science research institute PSE Healthy Energy and an associate researcher at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
“The rub is that we know more than we ever have, and we’re perhaps controlling more than we would have if we didn’t have the technology to see them, but we’re still seeing more and more of these large-scale emission events all across the United States and all across the world,” he said.
Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are still rising. It is streaming, often constantly, from facilities associated with the oil and gas industry, landfills and dairy farms, among other sources.
The Aliso Canyon Southern California Gas storage facility on May 28, 2020.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Methane isn’t the only concern either. Researchers now have a better understanding of what’s in the gas that blew from Aliso Canyon and that continues to be stored in natural gas facilities around the country. Although it is primarily composed of methane, roughly 99% of samples analyzed by Shonkoff and his team have contained hazardous air pollutants such as benzene, hexane and toluene, largely as a result of commingling with depleted oil and other subsurface materials.
Moving forward, he said, it will be critically important for gas companies to disclose to regulators and risk managers what their gas is composed of, so that if it leaks, responders can quickly determine the appropriate response.
“If we had had that with Aliso Canyon, we could have, within a matter of hours, understood whether people should get out of the way or stay inside, and we wouldn’t have had as many people suffering from health symptoms,” Shonkoff said.
In 2024, the Biden administration passed the first comprehensive rules to limit methane pollution by fining oil and gas developers for excessive emissions. But this year, the Trump administration revoked the rule, which it described as a tax.
At the same time, many natural gas storage facilities across the country are old and require retrofitting to meet current regulations, but such upgrades can be slow and expensive — often leaving ratepayers on the hook.
Residents near Aliso Canyon have also long feared an earthquake or wildfire in the area. The gas field sits along the Santa Susana fault and is in a high fire hazard severity zone. SoCalGas says it has numerous safety plans and procedures in place.
Perhaps the greatest tension remains between those who wish to see Aliso Canyon shuttered and the officials who say the facility is critically important to California’s energy supply, which is increasingly trying to serve power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers.
Dozens of Porter Ranch protesters chant “shut it all down,” as they demonstrate at the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility in Porter Ranch on May 15, 2016.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
California has committed to reaching 100% carbon neutrality by 2045. But SoCalGas says it still needs Aliso Canyon.
“SoCalGas is aligned with the state of California in pursuing the technologies and infrastructure that supports California’s climate plan, including clean renewable hydrogen and renewable natural gas, that could, over time with other renewable energy projects, deliver the reliability and affordability Aliso Canyon supports today,” the utility said in a statement. However, any decision to reduce or eliminate operations at Aliso Canyon must be based on genuine reduced demand that is permanent, the company said.
Pakucko, of Save Porter Ranch, noted that the facility was offline for two years after the blowout without an interruption in service.
“Two years!” he said. “And guess what? We managed without the facility.”
For others in the area, it feels like the latest in string of broken promises.
Among SoCalGas’s settlement agreements was a $120-million consent decree with the state of California requiring the utility to fund methane mitigation projects, air monitoring and other initiatives to address alleged harms caused by the blowout. About $25 million of that went toward a long-term health study on the effects of natural gas exposure, which is being conducted by researchers at UCLA. The results are eagerly awaited.
About $26 million went to a program for dairy digesters in the Central Valley, which capture methane from cow manure before it enters the atmosphere. Many had hoped those funds would be spent closer to home, including former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who at one point envisioned the mitigation money being used to transform Porter Ranch into a net-zero community.
“That would have been so great,” said Patty Gleuck, a Porter Ranch resident who served on the community advisory group for the health study. Instead, “that money went to this dairy digester program that does not benefit this area.”
Like Pakucko, Gleuck recalled suffering health effects during the blowout, including a tightness in her chest and a metallic taste in her mouth that dissipated when she left the area and resumed when she returned.
She still suffers from a chronic cough and uses an inhaler, she said, adding that “a lot of inhalers were prescribed in the area.”
“A lot of people moved away, taking a loss on their homes because they were so sick, or their family members were sick,” she said. “I just don’t think that there has been justice.”
Cable giant Charter Communications is laying off 1,200 employees nationwide as the company faces increased competition for its broadband internet packages.
The company operates Spectrum cable TV and broadband service, which was once a huge growth engine. But the company has faced a steady drumbeat of subscriber losses, including shedding 177,000 internet customers in the first and second quarters of this year.
The company has nearly 30 million internet customers.
The layoffs, equivalent to a little more than1% of its workforce, hit corporate and management positions at Charter’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn., and centers in Charlotte, Denver and St. Louis, according to a person familiar with the cuts but was not authorized to comment.
No sales or service positions were eliminated, the person said, adding the cuts were part of an effort to streamline management functions. The company is scheduled to announce its third-quarter earnings next week.
In addition to its internet service, Charter provides bundles of cable television channels to 12.6 million customers.
It also has nearly 11 million mobile phone subscribers.
The move comes in advance of Charter’s planned takeover of Cox Communications, which also operates in Southern California. This week’s cuts were not related to the Cox transaction, the knowledgeable person said.
Charter’s $34.5-billion industry-consolidating deal with Cox, which was unveiled in May, needs regulatory approval but that process has been slowed by the federal government shut-down.
Charter reported that it had about 94,500 active full-time workers at the end of 2024.
The company’s stock is down 27% since the beginning of the year. On Wednesday, shares slipped around 1% in mid-day trading.
Broadband internet has been the company’s bright spot as revenue from cable TV packages steadily declined over the years amid consumer cord-cutting and the shift to streaming.
Charter recognized that trend and began offering streaming apps to its broadband customers to help with retention efforts.
Two years ago, the company suffered huge cable TV customer losses during its 10-day blackout of Walt Disney Co. channels, including ESPN, during a tense distribution battle.
Charter was able to wrangle the ability to offer Disney’s streaming apps, including Disney+ and Hulu, to Spectrum customers.
The company had already been undergoing scattered instances of belt-tightening.
In August, Charter canceled its award-winning El Segundo based news show, “LA Times Today,” a collaboration with the Los Angeles Times, which ran on the cable company’s Spectrum 1 news channel.
Business
A Warner Bros.-Paramount Merger? Here’s All the Films, Streaming Services and Cable Channels They Own
Hollywood’s obsession with splashy team-ups may soon find its expression in one of the biggest deals of the year.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the media behemoth that owns DC Comics, “The Sopranos” and Scooby-Doo, has received acquisition interest from multiple companies, including Paramount, the company behind “Star Trek” and “Top Gun.”
Warner Bros. Discovery acknowledged those discussions on Tuesday without naming specific suitors, reminding investors that it is still pursuing a spin-off off its studio business.
If a deal with Paramount reaches fruition, it would create a news and entertainment behemoth to rival streaming juggernauts like Netflix and Disney. Here’s a look at the films, shows and characters that the combined company would own, from Harry Potter to Captain Kirk.
Combining Paramount and Warner Bros. would bring together hit franchises and more than a century of cinematic storytelling. But it could also reduce competition for new projects and result in major cost-cutting as two studios come under the same corporate umbrella.
Both Paramount and Warner Bros. lag the biggest companies in streaming, Netflix and Disney. A merger would allow them to spread the money they spend on movies and TV shows across a wider base of subscribers, perhaps leading to better profitability.
CBS News, the venerable network that was home to Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, recently brought on board Bari Weiss, an opinion journalist who founded The Free Press, as its editor in chief. It’s unclear whether she would have oversight over CNN, the globe-spanning news colossus known for its blanket coverage of international affairs and breaking news, if the two companies merged.
While traditional cable networks are enormously profitable — generating hundreds of millions of dollars in cash — they are losing viewers and relevance every quarter. Some companies, like Comcast and Warner Bros., have been responding to that decline by spinning off their traditional TV businesses.
Not Paramount. The company behind “South Park” and “Yellowstone” is holding on to those channels, betting that those franchises will be popular with millions of viewers on both traditional TV and streaming. Acquiring a lineup of popular new channels would allow Paramount to shore up its leverage in negotiations with cable companies like Charter, which pay to distribute its programs. Both companies also rent rights to live sports, one of the last must-see programs in the imploding cable universe.
Prestige television is a linchpin for streaming companies, which rely on quality shows to entice new subscribers and keep existing customers happy. While HBO and Showtime are still reliable sources of traditional TV profits, both services are increasingly viewed as a supplier for their digital counterparts, HBO Max and Paramount+.
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