As president-elect Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House in January 2025, policy and cabinet positions have slowly started to take shape for his second term in office.
Yet one piece of the States’ future seemed set in stone long before the next president was elected: US debt would rise. Under Trump, debt is expected to grow by more than £7.5bn. As of October, it had ballooned to over $35.85trn (£28.35trn), and in the past decade, US debt has grown by almost $18trn.
While mounting US debt has been a perennial topic of discussion, there has been little in the way of consequences so far. The country hit its debt ceiling in January 2023, and in June of that year, lawmakers opted to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025. Raising or suspending the ceiling is far from an uncommon practice for the US government: since 1960, it has been increased 78 times.
Gradually, and then all at once
How long this trend…
