U.S. national debt is now around $38.6 trillion, and Trump is talking about a $1.5 trillion military budget by 2027. At some point the numbers stop feeling real. The question isn’t just how high the debt can go, but what the consequences are as interest costs keep rising.
Can the U.S. inflate or devalue the dollar enough to make the debt more manageable in real terms? Possibly — but that comes with trade-offs: higher inflation, higher borrowing costs, and pressure on the dollar’s credibility. If pushed too far, it risks damaging U.S. creditworthiness and reputation for decades, even if there’s no sudden “blow-up.”
The U.S. can’t go bankrupt in the normal sense since it issues its own currency, but that doesn’t mean the debt is irrelevant. The real constraint is confidence — from bond markets, foreign holders, and domestic voters — and once that erodes, fixing it gets a lot harder.
