Despite the recent steep decline in the exchange value of the dollar, the U.S. still runs a substantial current account deficit with China. When Chinese citizens sell goods and services to American citizens, rather than accepting U.S. goods and services as payment, Chinese citizens have been purchasing American assets instead, and in particular, U.S. Treasury securities. While foreign ownership of such debt has been increasing rapidly, Chinese accumulation of U.S. government debt has raised some concerns that the U.S. is at risk to the Chinese “dumping” all of these securities on the open market – thereby depressing federal debt prices and putting upward pressure on U.S. interest rates.