The latest US Treasury Department data shows that foreign investors slashed their holdings of American debt in November by $105 billion, from a year earlier, to $6.2 trillion.

China, the largest foreign holder of US debt, slashed its holdings for a sixth straight month in November. Beijing had $1.12 trillion in US Treasuries, down from $1.138 trillion in October. The decline brought China’s Treasury holdings to the lowest level since May 2017, the data showed.

The two largest foreign creditors of the US — China and Japan — have both been unloading US Treasury securities. China’s holdings fell by $55 billion from a year earlier, Japan’s by $47 billion to $1.04 trillion. Tokyo has now reduced its stash by 16 percent since the peak of $1.24 trillion at the end of 2014.

Russia, which is no longer a leading creditor of the United States after an unprecedented dumping of the US Treasury bonds in April and May, has slashed its stockpile by $1.815 billion in November to $12.814 billion.

Since last year, Russia has slashed around 85 percent of its US Treasury holdings, from $96.9 billion in January 2018 to $12.8 billion in November.

READ MORE: China’s yuan to challenge greenback as world’s main currency – Bank of England governor

Over the past 12 months, the US gross national debt has ballooned by $1.5 trillion to $22 trillion as of January 30, according to the Treasury.

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The US based aviation corporation has paused deliveries of the ill-fated Boeing 737 MAX to customers after the aircraft type was grounded around the world following the deadly crash in Ethiopia.

The move was announced by the company on Thursday. No time frame on when the deliveries might be resumed was immediately provided, yet the production itself continues.

“We continue to build 737 MAX airplanes while assessing how the situation, including potential capacity constraints, will impact our production system,” a Boeing spokesman said.

The decision comes after Boeing 737 MAX planes were grounded and banned from the airspace of the majority of the world’s countries, including the United States. The plane type was targeted with the restrictions after a crash in Ethiopia on Saturday, which killed 157 people – everyone on board. The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after take-off, taking a steep nosedive.

While the exact causes of the tragedy have not yet been established, the crash appears to resemble another catastrophe involving a 737 MAX aircraft. Last October, a Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.

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