₦airaland Forum

The United States’ national debt has topped $38 trillion, as the gap between government spending and revenues in the world’s largest economy expands at a rapid pace.

The US Department of the Treasury included the staggering figure in its latest report on the nation’s finances, with the debt standing at $38,019,813 as of Tuesday.

The figure amounts to roughly $111,000 of debt for every person in the US, and is equivalent to the value of the economies of China, India, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom combined, according to the Peter G Peterson Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank.

The milestone comes a little over two months after debt in the US surpassed $37 trillion in mid-August. The debt stood at $36 trillion in November 2024, and $35 trillion that July.

Michael A Peterson, CEO of the Peter G Peterson Foundation, said US lawmakers were failing to live up to their “basic fiscal duties”.

“Adding trillion after trillion to the debt and budgeting-by-crisis is no way for a great nation like America to run its finances,” Peterson said in a statement.

“Instead of letting the debt clock tick higher and higher, lawmakers should take advantage of the many responsible reforms that would put our nation on a stronger path for the future.”

In May, Moody’s ratings downgraded the US government’s credit rating from Aaa to Aa1, citing the failure of successive administrations to “reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs”.

The move followed similar downgrades by rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s in 2011 and 2023, respectively.

While there is debate among economists about how much debt the US can take on before triggering a financial crisis, there is widespread agreement that the current trajectory is unsustainable.

In a 2023 analysis, economists at the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that financial markets would not tolerate US debt levels above 200 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the debt could reach 200 percent of GDP by 2047, in part due to sweeping tax cuts included in US President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

nairalanda1:
USA is also productive, and is also an industrial nation

Nigeria is not productive, and is a resource dependent mess

Make we stop using statistics to feel good about ourselves. Nigeria must stop running sharing economy

FreeStuffsNG:
It's obvious that you are confused with those economic terms.

This is why education is good and it's not a scam. USA has been minting dollars and selling debts at a pace that human history has never recorded and you cannot decipher it.

US , under Trump, is a dying empire!

BlackViper:
Most of the debt was acquired under Biden when a lot of money was printed needlessly.

FreeStuffsNG:
The move followed similar downgrades by rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s in 2011 and 2023, respectively.

In less than 1 year in office, Trump raised it by a whopping $2 trillion and Biden, as pitiable as his time in office was, inherited trillions of debt ballooned by same Trump during his first term in office.

There's something fundamentally wrong and it probably predates even Trump’s first term.

Yet in the midst of this, Trump still keep sending weapons to its middle east proxy Israel to continue the genocide in Gaza. Smh

FreeStuffsNG:
It's obvious that you are confused with those economic terms.

This is why education is good and it's not a scam. USA has been minting dollars and selling debts at a pace that human history has never recorded and you cannot decipher it.

US , under Trump, is a dying empire!

SIRTee15:
This is what Trump wants to reverse by bringing manufacturing back but it's just too late. This is what Obama should have done instead on promoting homosexuality or Bush instead of fighting needless wars.

.

BlackViper:
You're either ignorant or dishonest. I'm trying to figure out which is which.

deficit and they want it to continue for purely selfish reasons

FreeStuffsNG:
If you devote the time you use to insult people to getting real education, you will benefit greatly. You are completely ignorant about national debt in relation to deficit/surplus.

Below is the history of their national debt and surplus.
Obama who came right in the middle of crash and ruled for 8 years added $9 trillion while Trump who ruled for 4 years added almost same amount of a whopping $7 trillion!
On deficit, USA, reached its worst deficit under same Trump. For 4 years, he was practically borrowing and adding almost zilch to their economy!

And in just few months and less than 1 year, he has added $2 trillion to the debt he inherited.

SIRTee15:
This is what Trump wants to reverse by bringing manufacturing back but it's just too late. This is what Obama should have done instead on promoting homosexuality or Bush instead of fighting needless wars.

The decision by Western govt to send factories to China in the 1990s and 2000s will forever be the most foolish and most destructive policy ever made by any human government in history.

That action is the bane of all problems facing western countries right now. In the name of some fictitious climate change, they were fooled into closing their factories with the hope service industry will be sufficient to build a nation. They were wrong, very wrong.

Now they are faced with a hyperenergetic and crazily competitive China whose main goal is to completely control the global manufacturing value chain from top to
bottom.

The West can't compete with China. That's the truth. It's a game over and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

China is about to take over the global car industry with their cheap but efficient electric cars. Once they succeed, that will lead to the decimation of the European motor industry.

Once China have a solid grip on semiconductor and airplane manufacturing, the doors of the last manufacturing in the west will shut down.

Europe is on its way to be next south america- nations filled with wealthy and working class with very tiny middle class.

America won't go down easily, they will likely choose war to determine their fate.

SIRTee15:
This is what Trump wants to reverse by bringing manufacturing back but it's just too late. This is what Obama should have done instead on promoting homosexuality or Bush instead of fighting needless wars.

The decision by Western govt to send factories to China in the 1990s and 2000s will forever be the most foolish and most destructive policy ever made by any human government in history.

That action is the bane of all problems facing western countries right now. In the name of some fictitious climate change, they were fooled into closing their factories with the hope service industry will be sufficient to build a nation. They were wrong, very wrong.

Now they are faced with a hyperenergetic and crazily competitive China whose main goal is to completely control the global manufacturing value chain from top to
bottom.

The West can't compete with China. That's the truth. It's a game over and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

China is about to take over the global car industry with their cheap but efficient electric cars. Once they succeed, that will lead to the decimation of the European motor industry.

Once China have a solid grip on semiconductor and airplane manufacturing, the doors of the last manufacturing in the west will shut down.

Europe is on its way to be next south america- nations filled with wealthy and working class with very tiny middle class.

America won't go down easily, they will likely choose war to determine their fate.

muyico:
So Nigeria?? We're still baby in debt, how much is ours debts self??

FarahAideed:
Most of the debt is actually internal debt and not the type of Debt Tinubu govt owes ..the US does not go around borrowing from countries like APC govt does ... most of it are just IOUs to U.S. banks, pension funds, insurance companies, and even the Social Security Trust Fund that hold Treasury bonds.

For example the 780bn US owes China is Treasury bonds the Chinese bought to stabilize their local currency...dont allow any APC data boy mislead that the Americans are owing more than Tinubu 😂😂😂

Skydivine:
Just one cough from the President and the debt will be wiped out. They are just paying to show maturity.
I love the USA.
Think about this, if you claim they don’t have money , how were they able to bail out Argentina with over $40b last week?