“The House passed it. The President praised it. Investors dumped it.”
This is how Nigel Green, CEO of global financial advisory giant deVere Group, reacts as Donald Trump pushes through his flagship tax bill—riddled with giveaways, short on discipline—while the bond markets flash red in warning.
Yields on 30-year Treasuries have surged past 5%, and demand is thinning fast. The most decisive resistance to Trump’s economic plans isn’t coming from lawmakers or lobbyists. It’s coming from investors.
“The bond market is delivering the only serious resistance to a policy direction that has lost grounding in reality,” says Nigel Green. “Investors are effectively saying: we don’t believe you anymore.”
That breakdown of trust is already sending tremors through the financial system. This week’s 20-year Treasury auction drew weak demand, and stocks tumbled alongside bonds.
“That’s a rare double hit that signals growing fear, not just volatility,” Nigel Green notes. “It’s not partisan. It’s arithmetic.”
The arithmetic is ugly. Moody’s just stripped the US of its final Aaa credit rating, following similar actions by Fitch and S&P. America’s debt is now projected to hit 134% of GDP within a decade, and investors are waking up to the implications.
“This isn’t a temporary blip,” warns Green. “Three downgrades in 14 years is not a coincidence—it’s a verdict.”
And that verdict is about more than numbers. It’s about leadership.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is a jumbled mix of tax cuts targeting key voter groups—hourly workers, retirees, car buyers—offset by vague promises of future savings. The idea of a balanced budget, once central to Republican fiscal identity, has been quietly abandoned.
“This is economic populism dressed up as policy,” says Green. “It ignores the cost of capital, it ignores the cost of debt, and it gambles that the rest of the world will keep funding the experiment. But they’re beginning to walk away.”
The effects aren’t theoretical. Higher Treasury yields mean higher borrowing costs across the board—for mortgages, for businesses, for the government. The average American will feel it in rising loan repayments and shrinking investment returns.
And yet, this pressure might offer one faint sliver of hope.
“If there’s one force this administration might still respond to, it’s the bond market,” says Green. “We’ve seen it before—when yields spike, policy changes follow.”
In April, a sudden jump in yields after tariffs went live prompted an overnight policy U-turn. Trump blinked. He suspended most of the measures just hours after announcing them. Not because of political backlash—but because markets pushed back.
“This administration is hurtling toward a fiscal cliff with no plan, no brakes, and no credibility,” says Green.
“The bond market is the only mechanism left with the strength to apply pressure. And crucially, it’s the one pressure point this White House sometimes takes seriously.”
With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent abroad and out of the room, the moderating voices are thin. But if markets continue to tighten, if auctions continue to stumble, if investors keep selling—then Trump may once again be forced to reconsider.
“This isn’t about ideology anymore,” Green insists. “It’s about solvency. And the bond market is forcing the conversation that no one else can.”
With Senate negotiations due to start in June, the coming weeks will reveal whether the fiscal damage can still be contained—or whether this chapter of economic fiction becomes permanent.
“Trump’s team thinks they can talk their way out of this. They can’t,” says Green.
“Markets are no longer responding to spin. They’re responding to structure—and the structure is collapsing.”
He concludes: “The US built its financial supremacy on trust and predictability. That trust is cracking. When investors start demanding a premium just to lend to the world’s largest economy, the game has already changed.”
deVere Group is one of the world’s largest independent advisors of specialist global financial solutions to international, local mass affluent, and high-net-worth clients. It has a network of offices around the world, more than 80,000 clients, and $14bn under advisement.
