At this point the Corona virus has cost the United States 2.2 trillion dollars in new government debt, billions in lost revenue and wages, and millions of jobs.
China holds a significant portion of the United states debt.
In an ideal world GEOTUS would tell China "we are no longer paying interest or principal on that debt. Fuck you and your bioterrorist ruling class"
Hell, I'd go a step further and just default on all Chinese held debts
If you don’t pay the interest you promised, you are defaulting on your debt. And that would result in an immediate, substantial downgrade of our bonds, raising our overall interest payments to unsustainable levels.
Our interest payments to China are fairly low - probably $50 billion a year or less, so we couldn’t recover our losses from this virus by withholding interest payments anyway.
The only possibility would be some kind of lawsuit where (assuming we win) the USG could “confiscate” the bonds as a full or partial payment. This would generate much more income and not result in a debt downgrade since it wouldn’t be a default.