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.
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