There is an invisible glue that binds the economy. It determines the cost of your day-to-day life, such as your mortgage, credit card bills and business loans. You might not know it’s therebitspin, but you’ll sorely miss it if it ever goes away.

The $27 trillion U.S. Treasury market, the largest government bond market in the world by multiples, is the starting point for the cost of capital. It directly affects the everyday activities of American consumers and businesses. It helps determine how much the government can spend and underpins global American power.

Policy proposals from Donald Trump and his circle would threaten the huge advantages the United States enjoys from this market. These include unfunded tax cuts, an even broader trade war, a weakening of the dollar and a reduction in the independence of the Federal Reserve. Taken alone, they would probably raise borrowing costs for businesses, households and the government. That would mean everyone would have less money to spend.

We know campaign promises do not always become reality. Both parties have carried out policies over time that have had costs as large as their benefits. Still, the potential fallout from this particular set of ideas would be a significant disruption to the Treasury market and everything that depends on it, including interest rates. Republicans must find other ways to achieve their economic goals.

Consider the G.O.P. plan to extend the 2017 tax cuts. If not offset with new revenue or reduced spending, these cuts would worsen an already daunting fiscal position. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in May that extending these tax cuts would add $4.6 trillion to the government deficit over the next decade. That could be covered by selling more Treasury debt, but only up to a point. If investors didn’t want the additional bonds, prices would fall, and the related interest payout would have to rise to keep them attractive. That’s one mechanism by which borrowing gets more expensive.

A similar dynamic would be at play in a trade war. Tariffs tend to raise prices for the goods that are targeted; they are essentially a tax on imports that gets passed on to consumers or companies. Depending on their scale and impact, the central bank might need to keep interest rates higher for longer to tamp tariffs’ inflationary effect.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.bitspin

• How
• Trump
• could
• bitspin
• Ideas