Treasury announced today that it will buy up to $6 billion in longer-dated bonds, above its previous guidance of at least $4 billion, as yields remain elevated. Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields rose following the announcement, reaching their highest level since November 2023.

The Cato Institute’s Jai Kedia has argued that Treasury’s expanding buyback program cannot sustainably lower long-term yields without addressing the underlying forces pushing borrowing costs higher. Following today’s announcement, Jai shared the following statement:

“Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent has announced a further increase in the Treasury’s bond buyback program from $4 billion to $6 billion. Last time, his proposal lowered bond yields for a day before they rebounded. This time, markets went further to repudiate these government price engineering policies as yields immediately increased following his announcement.”

“As long as the Treasury department misdiagnoses the causes of high bond yields, those yields will continue to rise and no amount of government fine tuning can fix that. If the administration is serious about lowering yields, it must attempt to fix its own flawed policies like excessive spending, tariffs, and war.”

Jai laid out the broader case in his recent analysis, “Treasury Cannot and Should Not Engineer Bond Prices.”

If you’d like to speak with Jai about Treasury’s expanding buyback program and the forces driving long-term yields, I’m happy to connect you.

Best,

Ryan Carver
Media Relations Manager
540–589‑0573
Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20001