Once a top investor with over $170 billion in US Treasury bills, Russia continued reducing its holdings of US debt in May to almost $12 billion, according to recent data published by the US Treasury Department.

Russia’s stockpile of Treasury bills fell by more than $100 million in one month to $12.024 billion, $5.25 bn of which is in long-term securities.

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Moscow accelerated dumping US debt last year, when it reduced its holdings by more than 85 percent, from $96.9 billion in January to $13.2 billion in December. The biggest reduction came it April and May, when the country reduced its stockpile by around $81 billion.

The selloff is even more dramatic since 2010, when Russia held US Treasury bonds worth over $170 billion.

US trade war rival China remains the largest foreign holder of American debt, but it continued to sell its holdings in May for a fourth month in a row. Beijing now has $1.11 trillion in US Treasury bills, down from nearly $1.113 trillion in April and more than 10 billion less than it had in March.

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The second largest US debt holder, Japan, boosted its Treasuries holdings to $1.101 trillion, the highest in almost two years since August 2017, from the 1.064 trillion it held in April.

This year the US national debt climbed above $22 trillion and this figure is expected to continue rising in the next three decades, reaching 144 percent of GDP by 2049, according to a recent analysis.

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