It wasn’t even a year ago that fiscal hawks were wringing their hands over a new national debt milestone: The debt had hit $38 trillion, and interest payments on an annual basis would be 13 figures.
A little over 200 days later, the U.S. national debt stands at more than $39 trillion. According to Treasury data, updated retrospectively for May 18, the debt landed at $39,008,999,901,378.68.
More than $1 trillion has been added since October 23, 2025—about $5 billion per day. The debt surpassed $39 trillion in mid-March and actually fell below it for several weeks before cresting to this point again.
Concern about the level of national debt is growing, particularly in relation to GDP, known as the debt-to-GDP ratio. This represents a nation’s borrowing versus the growth of its economy, and therefore the risk levels attached to servicing and repaying the debt. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio sits at approximately 123%, meaning its borrowing is bigger than the size of its entire economy.
There have been calls to better align borrowing with this metric: namely, the yearly government deficit should be targeted at 3% of GDP, rather than its current level of more than 6%. This has garnered bipartisan support, but would require a mammoth effort: The mere 3% cut would require approximately $10 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade to reach the target by 2036.
The issue is rising up the agenda for both those in public service and in the private sector: Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio has long warned of an economic “heart attack,” whereby service payments on debt would one day choke out public-sector investments. Already, interest payments are equivalent to government spending on education and the military combined.
Likewise, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently warned that the bond market will ultimately prove to be the factor that provokes some action from DC when investors begin to demand higher premiums to continue buying debt.
All that being said, investors still see U.S. Treasuries as one of the safest assets—if not the safest—on the market, as reflected in the fact that 20- and 30-year Treasuries have stayed relatively flat, meaning lenders are not demanding higher returns to bankroll Uncle Sam’s borrowing, although the 30-year has crept toward Great Recession levels, stirring debate about whether the “bond vigilantes” are riding again.
The president also has his own take on the debt picture. Trump has demonstrated he’s aware of the nation’s fiscal trajectory and has suggested some methods to help rebalance—tariffs and golden visas, to name a few.
However, in a recent interview with Fortune’s Editor in Chief, Alyson Shontell, Trump also shared an alternate view: That the nation’s debt is really not so bad if you see it through the lens of a real estate mogul. The debt versus the total value of America and its natural assets, such as the Grand Canyon or surrounding oceans. “If you put down the value of these things, it’s like hundreds of trillions of dollars,” Trump says, and by that measure, “if you kept [the national debt] at $40 trillion, you’re way under-levered.”
This argument may not be so convincing to debt hawks. As Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, warned earlier this month, the borrowing milestones being hit with increasing frequency “show the need for us to get our fiscal situation under control.”
She added: “Markets will only tolerate our unsustainable borrowing for so long; the risk of a fiscal crisis gets higher as the days pass. We need deficit reduction urgently.”
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