During his first presidential campaign in 2016, Donald Trump proudly called himself the “king of debt.”
“I’m great with debt,” Trump said in a June 2016 interview with Norah O’Donnell on “CBS This Morning.” “Nobody knows debt better than me. I’ve made a fortune by using debt.”
But he drew a sharp distinction between private and public borrowing.
“I like debt for me,” he said. “I don’t like debt for the country.”
A decade later, approaching the midpoint of Trump’s second term in the White House, the national debt held by the public has soared above $31 trillion — roughly equal to 101% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the ratio will reach a record 120% by 2036, eclipsing the previous high set just after World War II.
Meanwhile, serving this ballooning debt is growing more costly. The U.S. government spent $970 billion just on interest in 2025, and that cost is projected to blow past $1 trillion in 2026, according to the budget office. The government already spends more on interest than on national defense.
A new analysis by William Emmons, a former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, found that Trump is on course to preside over the largest increase in federal debt relative to the economy of any two-term president since Dwight Eisenhower, who left office in 1961.
Trump approaches a debt record
By several measures, Trump is fast approaching debt records.
Emmons calculated that federal debt rose by 24.8 percentage points relative to GDP during Trump’s five nonconsecutive years in office.
Among presidents since Eisenhower, only Barack Obama recorded a larger increase over a comparable five-year period, largely in response to the financial crisis that began in 2008.
But Emmons told Straight Arrow that even a modest increase during the remainder of Trump’s second term “would make Trump the champion of debt accumulation over an eight-year span as president.”
Given the current budget and economic outlooks, he added, “Trump will shatter the previous record.”
Emmons said that Trump’s two major tax laws are central drivers of the increase.
Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, cautioned that changes in the debt during a president’s tenure cannot always be attributed to that president. Policies enacted by previous administrations and economic shocks beyond a president’s control can also increase borrowing and push up the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Still, Goldwein told Straight Arrow, “in Trump’s first term, almost everything he did was adding to the debt.”
In a 2024 analysis, the CRFB estimated Trump approved $8.4 trillion in new borrowing over ten years during his first term, or $4.8 trillion excluding the CARES Act and other pandemic relief.
By that measure, which tries to isolate the fiscal consequences of the president’s policies, Goldwein said, Trump has probably added more debt than any other recent president.
White House defends its record
In response to Emmons’ analysis, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the administration was reducing unnecessary spending and promoting faster economic growth.
“The Trump administration is slashing the pervasive waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending,” Desai told Straight Arrow, “while accelerating economic growth to ensure that America’s debt-to-GDP ratio continues trending in the right direction.”
Goldwein disputed that characterization.
“For starters, debt to GDP is not trending in the right direction. It’s trending very much in the wrong direction,” he said.
“What they have done is accelerate the growth of the debt,” Goldwein added, “but there is little change to the trajectory of GDP.”
The Department of Commerce reported Thursday that the economy grew at a 2.1% annual rate during the first quarter of 2026, faster than previously estimated. But Goldwein said growth at that pace cannot reverse the rise in debt relative to the economy.
As a debt hawk, Goldwein believes the administration deserves credit for spending cuts and waste reduction. But he said those savings are dwarfed by the cost of Trump’s tax policies.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed on July 4, 2025, will add about $3.4 trillion to cumulative federal deficits through 2034.
Economic shocks complicate presidential comparisons
Economic shocks outside a president’s control can force the government to borrow heavily, complicating comparisons among presidents.
The largest annual increase in debt under Trump occurred as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the economy. The federal government borrowed trillions of dollars to support households, state and local governments, businesses and the health care system.
Obama also borrowed extensively during a major economic shock: the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting Great Recession, which he inherited when he took office in January 2009.
Federal debt relative to GDP rose sharply during Obama’s first years in office and continued to grow throughout his presidency, according to Emmons’ analysis.
Those circumstances help explain why Obama and Trump recorded the largest five-year increases in debt relative to GDP among recent presidents. But they do not account for all of the borrowing approved during either administration.
Rising risk of debt crisis?
The United States is not facing an imminent inability to pay its bills. But economists warn that persistently large deficits and mounting interest costs are increasing the risk of a financial crisis.
Emmons called the rising national debt a “clear and present danger” and said that traditional fiscal conservatives are not speaking loudly enough.
“It’s hard to even imagine, certainly from a political standpoint, how we get ahead of this,” Emmons said.
“What keeps me up at night,” Goldwein said, “is really the elevated risk that this will spin out of control.”
Goldwein said the risk is that rising debt and interest costs could eventually feed on themselves, requiring still more borrowing and eroding investor confidence in the federal government’s finances.
Spending more than $1 trillion annually on interest, Goldwein added, is increasingly crowding out other national priorities.
“Because we haven’t had the ultimate debt crisis, people may think, ‘This must not be real,’” Emmons said. “But it is real.”
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