In March 2025, videos surfaced on social media alleging that Japan was threatening to sell billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff threats.
The assertion, which offered no corroborating evidence, was false.
The rumor stemmed from videos posted on YouTube with titles like, "Japan Threatens to Dump U.S. Debt Over Trump's Tariffs – Economic War Brewing! Electric Vehicles, EV," and a thumbnail showing a concerned Trump watching the news.
In the case of that video, posted by the "Piston Pundit" channel, Artificial intelligence (AI) video-creation tools seemingly helped create the video's narration, scripting, sequencing and thumbnail.
Without naming a source for its information, the video's narrator said:
Buckle up, because Japan's recent maneuver in the U.S. bond market is sending shockwaves through the global economy, and it's all tied to the escalating trade conflict over electric vehicle tariffs. Washington is facing a financial gut punch as Japan begins offloading U.S. treasury bonds, a move that could weaken the dollar and destabilize markets worldwide.
The video's narrator flipped back and forth between claiming that Japan was threatening to sell and that the country had already begun selling U.S. Treasurys. The video had been viewed more than 540,000 times, as of this writing, since its upload on March 20.
There was no real evidence to support the assertion that Japan directly threatened to sell some of its $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasurys in March 2025. The videos claimed the Japanese finance minister announced the threat on March 1, but the finance ministry did not issue any news releases on that day.
In November 2024, a report from Bloomberg found that after the U.S. presidential election, Japanese investors did actually sell large amounts of U.S. Treasurys, one of the most stable financial assets in existence. However, the trend had reversed by January 2025.
A March 2025 report from Barron's confirmed that since the election, foreign countries had sold billions in long-term Treasurys. However, that report stated Japan actually bought bonds in January 2025 (the most recent month of data available), not sold them. That finding is supported by data from the U.S. Treasury Department, which published preliminary data on foreign Treasury bond holdings on Feb. 28, 2025.
Trump has promised to enact tariffs on America's largest trading partners, including Japan, several times since taking office. In February, he announced tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China before agreeing to delay them for a month after discussions with Mexican and Canadian officials. In early March, those tariffs did go into effect for three days before the U.S. again backed off.
Trump then promised to reinstate the March tariffs alongside new ones affecting several other countries, including Japan. However, on March 23, the The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was beginning to walk its promises back again. The Treasurys' yield increased as a result, meaning investors were more confident in the economy and willing to take more risks, according to Bloomberg.
Despite the fact that the video's underlying claim was false, the clips could seem believable because they mentioned tariffs the Trump administration has promised to impose on Japanese goods. By mixing facts with misleading and unsourced information, such videos with baseless, AI-generated rumors can generate hundreds, or thousands, of comments from YouTube users. Some of those messages indicate that people interpret the videos to be real news.