A solid chunk of President Trump's latest sit-down interview with one of his favorite reporters - the OG "money honey" Maria Bartiromo - was devoted to the president's latest belligerent musings about China, the latest in an escalating tit for tat as at least one hedge fund titan subtly warns that 'World War III' between the US and China might be a tail-risk worth hedging against.

Asked about the US-China bilateral relationship, Trump replied "we could cut off the whole relationship," saying the US "could save $500 billion" by doing so. For those who don't understand the significance of this last remark, it's a reference to cancelling some of the massive pile of Treasury debt held by China. Rates have continued to drop even as China has dumped a large chunk of its US foreign-exchange holdings, which has prompted some economist know-it-alls to insist that the Fed could simply soak up the entire slug of debt held by China, dismissing the risk of a destabilizing spike in interest rates.

"There are many things we could do," Trump said, "we could cut off the whole relationship." explaining that if that happened "[US would] save USD 500bln if you cut off the whole relationship. At what point - and I said this for years...and I said it about other countries also. Nato, I was able to get them to pay hundreds of billions more. You know who is my biggest fan in the world? Secretary Stoltenberg [the head of NATO]."

After that, Trump launched into a tangent about NATO before Bartiromo managed to bring him back to the topic at hand. Moving on, she  pressed Trump about whether he's raised any of these complaints with President Xi, with whom he has reportedly spoken at least one time since the beginning of the year.