The Memo: Rising bond yields, mortgage rates deepening gloom for Trump’s GOP

Hard numbers on the economy are spelling new trouble for President Trump and the GOP in the midterm elections. They also presage difficulties for millions of Americans.

The central issue is one that rarely commands headlines in normal times: bond yields.

The bond market is enormous but, usually, sleepy. That has changed recently — including with big new jolts this week.

On Wednesday, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note had its steepest one-day rise in more than a year. On Thursday, yields kept edging up. 

As the stock-trading day closed, the yield on the 10-year note was 5.163 percent, which according to The Wall Street Journal was the highest rate in 19 years. The yield on the 30-year bond reached its highest level since 2004, according to Reuters. 

Bond markets are not a typical conversation topic around the kitchen tables of America. But they might soon become one, because yields are of critical importance in setting rates for other types of borrowing that are more familiar to regular consumers — mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt. Some effects are already being seen. The average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage surpassed 7 percent this week.

In aggregate, it seems like a bleak scenario.

“Anytime the ‘boring’ bond market becomes an issue, it’s never good news,” Jared Bernstein, who served as the chair of then-President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, told this column.

Bernstein, now a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, stressed that the current situation is far from an esoteric concern, given how many people are already struggling with the cost of living.

“It’s a really important point,” he said. “When we talk about affordability, we are usually referring to highly salient and visible prices in the economy — the price of gas, the price of groceries, the........

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