Quantitative easing and foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries: a descriptive study from 2008 to 2023

This article examines how foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries co-moved with the Federal Reserve’s share of total public debt over 2008–2023, a period covering major episodes of quantitative easing and quantitative tightening. Using quarterly data from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database, the article constructs a measure of QE intensity and relates it to changes in foreign Treasury holdings. Conditional on macro-financial controls, a one percentage point increase in QE intensity is associated with approximately 0.30% points lower quarterly growth in foreign holdings. The association is stronger in the pre-COVID period, remains robust to excluding the COVID-onset quarters, and becomes small and statistically indistinguishable from zero within QE-active periods. Phase-level averages show that foreign-holdings growth was higher during QE phases than during QT phases. The analysis is descriptive and does not identify causal mechanisms.