Since 2019, something quiet but profound changed in the global financial system. Foreign governments stopped buying U.S. debt at scale. For decades, the world absorbed America’s borrowing habit, holding Treasuries as reserves. This allowed the U.S. to carry on with it’s global and domestic agenda – project power, and maintain a lifestyle that was unsustainable by any traditional economic metric. In return, the rest of the world quietly imported U.S. inflation. That arrangement is now falling apart.
During COVID, the U.S. crossed a line. It didn’t just print money to bail out banks. It handed cash directly to people. This was not business as usual. The velocity of money changed, and with it, the delicate balance of trust that made the dollar the global reserve currency. By January 2025, M2 was about 44% higher than its 2016–2019 average.
Now in 2025, with Republicans back in control, the focus has shifted. Their base, the industrial, working-class red states, is deeply skeptical of Wall Street, tech elites, and financialized wealth. In response, the current government has been playing hardball: demanding lower interest rates, ignoring market warnings as bond yields spike, raising tariffs, and floating policies that smell like capital controls, even if they don’t wear the name outright.
The result is a cocktail of uncertainty: falling foreign demand for Treasuries, rising cost of debt, and a central bank caught between market stability and inflation control.
Meanwhile, NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) in the U.S. are exposed like never before. You have no political leverage, only your assets and those assets are now squarely in the government’s crosshairs. Whether it’s a remittance tax, tighter rules on cross-border capital, or just social hostility toward wealthy, globally mobile immigrants, the signal is clear: you’re on borrowed time.
Your visa status doesn’t protect you. Your success makes you a target. You’re either going to need to fully naturalize and find political cover, or bring your money back to India before it’s too late.
And let’s be clear: a reckoning is coming. Whether it’s a slow-motion reset, a flash crisis, or a global negotiation akin to Bretton Woods or the Plaza Accord, the system is heading toward reorganization of some kind. The world is no longer willing to fund America’s deficits without limits, and domestic politics are no longer aligned with protecting global capital.
This is not a time for denial. It’s a time for clarity, agility, and sovereignty. Especially for those caught in between nations, like many NRIs are.
Yash Tambawala 