China held $1.04 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities as of December 2021. By December 2025, that position had declined to $683.5 billion — a reduction of roughly $357 billion, or 34%, over four years. China remains the third-largest foreign holder of U.S. federal debt, but its share of total foreign holdings fell from 13.4% to 7.4% over the same period. The trajectory is unambiguous and sustained. The decline has been both nominal and relative.

Foreign ownership of U.S. Treasury securities reached $9.2 trillion as of December 2025, representing 31% of total publicly held federal debt — a figure that has grown in dollar terms even as it has declined as a share of a rapidly expanding total. The Congressional Research Service released updated data on April 22, 2026, drawing on Federal Reserve flow-of-funds accounts and Treasury International Capital system figures through March 2026. The headline number is large but the trend it conceals is more telling.

Japan is the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities by a margin that is not particularly close. Its $1.185 trillion position as of December 2025 exceeds the United Kingdom’s second-place $866 billion by more than $300 billion, and outstrips China’s $683.5 billion by nearly half a trillion. Japan accounts for 12.8% of all foreign investment in U.S. publicly held federal debt. It has held the top position for years, interrupted only briefly during the period when China’s accumulation was at its peak.

Private investors now account for 58.1% of all foreign holdings of U.S. federal debt, with official sources — foreign governments and central banks — holding the remaining 41.9%. As of December 2025, that translates to $5.4 trillion in private foreign hands and $3.9 trillion under official control. The split reflects a structural shift in who finances American sovereign borrowing from abroad, with implications that are qualitatively different depending on which cohort is asked to absorb future supply.

The United States transferred $282.4 billion in interest payments to foreign holders of federal debt in 2025. The figure comes from Bureau of Economic Analysis international transactions data and represents money leaving the U.S. economy as income to non-American bondholders — governments, central banks, private institutions, and individual investors distributed across dozens of countries. To locate that number in context: $282.4 billion is roughly the annual GDP of a mid-sized economy.

Belgium holds $477.3 billion in U.S. Treasury securities as of December 2025, ranking it fourth among all foreign holders of U.S. federal debt, ahead of Canada, France, and Taiwan. Belgium’s GDP is roughly $600 billion. The idea that a country with an economy that size has organically accumulated nearly half a trillion dollars in U.S. sovereign paper, driven by domestic institutional demand, does not survive casual scrutiny. Belgium’s appearance near the top of the foreign holdings table is not evidence of Belgian appetite for Treasuries.