{"id":295738,"date":"2025-05-26T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=295738"},"modified":"2025-05-22T04:31:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T03:31:37","slug":"the-us-has-36-trillion-in-debt-what-does-that-mean-and-who-owns-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/05\/the-us-has-36-trillion-in-debt-what-does-that-mean-and-who-owns-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Has $36 Trillion in Debt–What Does That Mean, and Who Owns It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The US has the highest national debt in the world, a quarter of which is owned by other countries.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

20 May 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0On Sunday\u00a0 [18 May], a key congressional committee in the United States approved President Donald Trump\u2019s new tax cut bill, which could pass in the House of Representatives later this week.<\/p>\n

The bill extends Trump\u2019s 2017 tax cuts and may add up to $5 trillion to the national debt, deepening worries after a recent US credit ratings downgrade by Moody\u2019s on Friday, which cited concerns about the nation\u2019s growing $36 trillion debt.<\/p>\n

The US has the highest amount of national debt in the world and is facing growing concerns about its long-term fiscal stability.<\/p>\n

What is US debt?<\/h2>\n

Debt is simply the total amount of money the US government owes to its lenders, currently amounting to $36.2 trillion. This represents 122 percent of the country\u2019s annual economic output or gross domestic product (GDP), and it is growing by about $1 trillion every three months.<\/p>\n

The highest debt-to-GDP ratio was during the pandemic in 2020, when the ratio hit 133 percent. The US is among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio.<\/p>\n