President Donald Trump’s faltering push to shrink the national debt could be accelerating the country’s descent toward financial ruin, according to a key analyst.
Trump claimed that his sweeping tariffs will “pay down” the national debt, but it could actually be a reason the U.S. is “going broke,” according to JPMorgan Asset Management’s chief global strategist David Kelly in a note to investors.
“The question I am asked most frequently by investors and financial advisors is when is the federal debt going to blow up in all of our faces. My usual answer is that, while we are going broke, we are going broke slowly,” Kelly said.
Kelly said if the Supreme Court rules Trump’s tariffs are illegal it “could force substantial refunds,” raising the whopping $37.8 trillion in debt and its $1.2 trillion in interest.
“This would, at a minimum, force the administration to go back to the drawing board,” he said.
JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon has also expressed that the rising U.S. debt is a “big deal,” in an interview on Fox’s “Mornings With Maria.”
According to Kelly, the debt-to-GDP ratio could climb above 100% by next year, meaning the U.S. will owe more than its yearly output.
“There are good reasons to believe, however, that the debt will rise even faster than this,” he said.
But this already gloomy forecast is only if the economy doesn’t crash before then, Kelly said.
“Finally, this all assumes no recession and no need for other major spending on domestic or international priorities,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The Trump administration’s initiatives, such as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Big Beautiful Bill, have only hurt the hopes of clawing out of a mounting debt crisis.
eDespite the former DOGE head’s budget-slashing fantasies, a report from the Wall Street Journal found that Musk actually presided over a $220 billion increase in federal spending this fiscal year.
And Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will add a staggering $3.4 trillion to the federal debt in the next 10 years.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly warned about the mounting debt, saying that the path the U.S. economy is on is an “unsustainable” one.
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