The $40 trillion mark is a striking measure of the federal government’s accumulated borrowing, not a bill that comes due all at once. Its rise reflects pandemic spending, tax and spending choices, growing benefit costs and increasingly expensive interest payments.
The U.S. national debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time, with the Treasury Department reporting total public debt outstanding of $40.047 trillion. The debt more than doubled during the presidencies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, rising from $19.95 trillion when Trump first took office in January 2017.
The number is a major political marker, but it is also a practical fiscal one. Across Trump’s two terms, the debt has risen by $11.6 trillion, while Biden’s term added $8.4 trillion, according to figures cited by Reuters. The central question now is not merely how high the total goes, but how much the United States will spend to service it.
What the $40 trillion figure includes
The Treasury’s daily balance statement separates the overall debt into two broad buckets. About $32.266 trillion was debt held by the public, including Treasury securities owned by investors, financial institutions, pension funds, the Federal Reserve and foreign holders.
Another $7.782 trillion was intragovernmental debt: Treasury obligations held by government accounts such as Social Security trust funds. Together, those categories produced the $40.047 trillion total.
That distinction matters because “debt held by the public” is often the figure economists focus on when assessing how much the government is borrowing from outside investors and how federal borrowing can affect financial markets. The larger total remains the clearest tally of the government’s outstanding obligations.
The increase spans two presidencies
Pinning the full increase on one president would miss how federal borrowing works. Debt reflects years of laws, economic conditions and commitments that can extend beyond any single administration or Congress.
Still, the increase has been substantial under both Trump and Biden. Reuters reported that public debt rose by $7.8 trillion during Trump’s first term, with more than half of that increase accumulating during the final nine months as the government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden’s administration saw public debt increase by $8.4 trillion. That period included continued pandemic recovery efforts as well as spending tied to infrastructure investment, clean-energy subsidies and other Democratic priorities.
Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, the debt load has increased by $3.8 trillion, bringing the reported rise across his two terms to $11.6 trillion. Those figures describe changes in the debt total; they do not establish that one person or one law caused every dollar of the increase.
Pandemic borrowing was only part
Roughly one-third of the increase since early 2017 occurred during two years of extraordinary pandemic borrowing under Trump and Biden, Reuters reported. Emergency aid, support for households and businesses, public-health spending and a weakened economy all widened federal deficits.
But the debt did not stop growing once the immediate emergency passed. The United States has long spent more than it collects in revenue, and large programs including Social Security and Medicare continue to grow as more Americans receive benefits.
Tax policy, defense and domestic spending, infrastructure programs, subsidies and interest costs also shape the deficit. That makes the debt debate politically difficult: meaningful changes generally require some combination of higher revenue, lower spending, slower growth in benefit costs or stronger economic growth.
Interest costs raise the stakes
A high debt total is not automatically a crisis. The United States borrows in its own currency, Treasuries remain a core global financial asset, and the government has historically been able to refinance maturing debt.
The pressure point is the price of refinancing. As interest rates rise, Treasury must offer investors higher yields on new securities and on debt that is rolled over. That can push federal interest costs higher even without a major new spending program.
Reuters noted that long-term Treasury yields had climbed as investors demanded more compensation to hold large volumes of U.S. government debt. Foreign investors hold nearly one-third of Treasuries, and weaker demand from that group could leave more issuance to buyers who may be especially sensitive to price and yield changes.
Budget watchdogs argue that rising interest costs can crowd out other public priorities over time. Others caution against treating a single debt milestone as proof of imminent collapse, noting that the economy’s size, inflation, interest rates and investor demand all affect whether the debt burden is manageable.
Deficits are still running high
The new threshold arrived while the federal government was still posting large monthly deficits. Reuters reported a $432 billion deficit for July, the fourth-highest monthly shortfall on record, as tariff refunds reduced customs receipts and Social Security and Medicare outlays continued to rise.
The deficit for the first 10 months of fiscal 2026 had already surpassed the full-year deficit for fiscal 2025, according to the report. A deficit is the annual gap between spending and revenue; debt is the accumulated total of past borrowing. Persistent deficits add to the debt unless they are offset by surpluses.
The Congressional Budget Office has also estimated that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $4.7 trillion to debt, according to Reuters. Such projections are estimates rather than final outcomes, because they depend on economic growth, interest rates, implementation and future congressional decisions.
The next fight is over choices
The $40 trillion milestone gives both parties ammunition, but it does not settle the policy argument. Fiscal hawks generally call for spending restraint, tax increases or both. Supporters of particular spending and tax policies often argue that abrupt cuts or tax hikes could hurt growth, families or public services.
Trump has emphasized cost-cutting measures, including reductions aimed at federal agencies, while backing major spending and tax legislation. Critics say discretionary cuts alone cannot close the gap because discretionary programs make up a smaller share of federal spending than mandatory benefits and interest payments.
The enduring issue is arithmetic rather than branding: the government’s long-term commitments, revenues and borrowing costs must eventually fit together more closely. Crossing $40 trillion does not dictate one solution, but it makes the tradeoffs harder for Washington to postpone.
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