“We are taking no action based on rhetoric alone.”

So said Anders Schelde, CIO of Danish pension operator AkademikerPension, less than two weeks ago.

By “action,” Schelde meant divesting from the $100 million of US Treasurys the fund owned. By “rhetoric,” he meant Donald Trump’s ongoing threat to annex Greenland or, more to the point, seize the island from Denmark.

Schelde was responding to an inquiry from Chief Investment Officer, a news portal dedicated to “the overarching investment issues affecting public and corporate pension plans,” as the site describes its mission. The title of the linked article said it all: “Danish, European Pension Funds Reassess US Investments Amid Greenland Threats.”

Those threats escalated materially this month, culminating in Trump’s announcement of tariffs targeting European nations opposed to his Greenland acquisition plan. The proposed levies were met with consternation by markets on Tuesday, when the dollar fell the most since “Liberation Day.”

Schelde’s seen enough. AkademikerPension’s selling its Treasurys. All of them. “The US is basically not a good credit and long-term US government finances aren’t sustainable,” Schelde said, flatly, in a statement to financial media outlets.

Ratings agencies agree. America lost its last top credit rating in May, when Moody’s finally took the plunge nearly two years after Fitch (and 14 years after S&P). Credit assessors focus on debt and red ink, which is to say the same “unsustainable” government finances Schelde cited. But governance concerns are part of the rationale now too, as is the prospect that America might renege on its various commitments to a post-War global security architecture of its own design.

In short, the notion that fiscal fundamentals don’t matter for the US as long as the dollar’s unchallenged as the reserve currency, as well as the idea that it makes no sense to rate the US lower than nations which depend on the US military to defend their territorial sovereignty, are exercises in question-begging if America no longer intends to provide for the security of its allies, thereby forcing them to join US adversaries in considering alternatives to the dollar.

That’s where we are now. Not only is Trump casting doubt on America’s commitment to defend its friends in Europe against, for example, Russian aggression, he’s threatening to annex, by force if necessary, the territory of another NATO member, a move many argue would render the alliance null and void.

Schelde alluded to all of that on Tuesday. “You can’t put the genie back into the bottle,” he said. “Things might get better a few months down the road, and Trump can’t be reelected, but what comes then in five, six or 10 years? I think there’s a realization in Europe that we need to be able to stand on our own feet.”

That doesn’t just mean ramping up defense spending. It also means reconsidering US Treasurys as the gold standard for local savings. Denmark was ahead of the game on this. As Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos reminded investors, “Danish pension funds were one of the first to repatriate money and reduce their dollar exposure this time last year.”

At least three other pension managers in Denmark have offloaded Treasurys, or plan to. Trump isn’t doing himself any favors on this front by undermining the rule of law domestically. Laerernes Pension, another Danish pension operator, expressed concerns about Trump’s assault on the Fed when it pared its holdings recently.

Taken on their own, these sales don’t even amount to a drop in the proverbial bucket in the context of the Treasury market, but the signaling effect’s important. De-dollarization isn’t an idle threat. And “sell America” isn’t just another anti-Trump slogan. There are consequences for Trump’s actions, and Europe’s at the end of its rope.

Note that Denmark’s intelligence service last month called the US a potential security threat, citing Trump’s penchant for “us[ing] economic power to enforce its will.” America, Denmark sighed, “no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.”

Although an en masse exit on the part of European investors from US debt is still more thought experiment than practical reality, even incremental sales work at cross-purposes with Trump’s goal of bringing down borrowing costs at home.

As Ray Dalio put it Tuesday, speaking to CNBC in Davos, “[Y]ou can’t ignore the possibility of capital wars — maybe there’s not the same inclination to buy US debt and so on.”

In the same January 8 email to Chief Investment Officer mentioned here at the outset, Schelde said “if Greenland were to be annexed and the Stars and Stripes raised in Nuuk… we would move toward sell[ing] our holdings of US Treasurys.” He wasn’t bluffing.

Looking back on the editorial I published in conjunction with the May 2025 Moody’s downgrade, I can’t help but chuckle. “Pretending the US is less creditworthy than, say, Denmark is absurd on its face,” I wrote, before asking, “Do you want any kroner? Would you even know kroner if you saw it?”

I can’t decide if that was ironically prescient, pompously heedless or, like a lot of what I write, both.