The point is that it doesn't matter, the US is toxic for the next foreseeable twenty years, and for Europe as a whole, a threat and an enemy. We'd be stupid to keep funding your economy, no matter how much money it makes back. Enemies are to be taken down.

>under this president and the one who replaces him in three years.

The levels of optimism in this sentence are off the charts. The US's political systems are so weak, fragile and compromised that you don't even know if you're going to hold proper midterms or if you're going to get a civil war, the current president is threatening the FED, but sure, debts are going to be paid when it's ran by the dude that managed to bankrupt casinos.

The US will pay its debts in USD and the German government will pay its debts in Euros. If you think the euros to dollar exchange rate will be better in the future, it can easily dwarf the difference in interest rate between the bonds.

This president has publicly mulled not paying its debts.

It's time to stop magical, wishful thinking about how you want the world to be, and deal with the world as it is.

The risk for credit default is very close to zero, but the risk for renegotiated contract terms is not zero. That's what the whole Mar-a-Lago Accords was about. It is a strategy that describes in detail how that would be executed. The likeliness for which is up for debate, of course, but it's certainly not a risk free asset.

Add to that the rampant debt increase over many decades and zero political will to rectify the situation, which is why the rate of return is so much higher than in more politically stable countries such as for example Switzerland, Germany or Sweden.

1. Trump has constantly stated how he believes the US has spent money and lives doing things for the rest of the world. He just did it with Canada this week saying "Canada exists because of the US'.

2. The majority of his followers have some level of cult like adoration for him and therefore he isn't worried about losing support for radical actions.

3. Republican voters have been told to not trust the experts, news, or the opposing political party which eliminates all outside sources of information. This allows them to make claims about our debt or why we shouldn't pay it and many of these voters won't get opposing views.

4. Trump wants a massive increase in spending for the military and has cut taxes. While at the same time Republicans ran on the high debt. Not paying it by claiming it's invalid solves that.

Nothing is risk-free. But Canada is certainly more politically stable than the US.

To be clear, those countries are: Argentina, Belarus, Ghana, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Ukraine, and Venezuela. It would not be shocking if any of those countries defaulted. Also: your math assumes events are independent, but at least the Belarus/Russia/Ukraine events are probably not independent.

Edit: whoops, CFR only gives Russia a 9/10 score, not the full 10/10 score of 50% default probability.

> more politically stable than the US