The US national debt has now reached $40 trillion, the equivalent of the total debt of China, the EU, and the UK combined. This means that the national debt of 330 million people is more than the debt of almost 2 billion, and its debt-to-GDP is now 125%. Here in the UK, that ratio is 100%.
The real problem is that the Presidency, otherwise known as the oligarchy or plutocracy, is making billions for Trump, Witcoff, Kushner, Bessant and Lutnick and other grifters within Trump’s sycophantic ecosystem. What is clear the American people are not at the top of their agenda. Despite what is obvious to someone with a modicum of sense, Trump has an 80% approval rating amongst Republican voters. This is what you get when you don’t have a healthcare system free at the point of need.
All this is exacerbated by the phoney tariff war and a Cuba-type American adventurism in Iran. According to the Pentagon, the war with Iran has cost the American taxpayer $113 billion to date, and mini-brain Hegseth has asked for an additional $1.5 trillion in the next fiscal year. All this money spent, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are crowing like victors as they now have a weapon, as they say, that is more important than a nuclear bomb, that is control of the Straits of Hormuz.
According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, tax cuts/lost revenue since 2000 were nearly $11 trillion, with 65% going to the richest 20% and funding this largess has cost an additional $3 trillion, adding $14 trillion to the US’s national debt. In addition, the US national debt, which includes state debt, has a tax revenue-to-GDP of 27%, and in the EU, according to the European Commission is, wait for it, 40%. So, if the US chose to get to the EU average, it could raise an additional $4 trillion and make the top 20% pay for it. What about a digital service tax? This could raise around $20 billion. There is no federal inheritance tax in the US. Cerulli Associates as Boston based research company, has estimated that in the US there is $124 trillion worth of assets to be passed down the family food chain. In UK terms, that would be £90 trillion and would, under our tax regime would attract anything from $10 to £15 trillion over a period of time.
Many of the US’s electorate have been duped into believing that the US government’s past and the crazy present one is acting in their economic interest; this is false. Why? Because you don’t have a real democracy. That’s because it was corrupted in 2010 by the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allowing the political system to be awash with money, for example by the Koch brothers, Thiel and others. This has created a plutocracy that is only interested in lining their pockets and undermining democracy, all at the expense of “ALL” Americans.
In the short term, US bonds will be less attractive, and as a consequence, it will cost the US government more. However, the US economy represents 25% of the world’s GDP, and the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency in which all key commodities are valued and will continue to rack up debt unafraid of losing its safe haven status or, finally, print more money on the back of the “Deficit Myth”. Knowing the Republican Party’s commitment to social cohesion, they can cut Medicare or other welfare programmes but, praise the Lord, don’t raise taxes. Foreign governments own 25% of US debt and another 25% is held by pension and investment funds, and clearly turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. So, there is unlikely to be de-dollarisation because there is no contender in sight, not even China, and the euro zone as an economic power is declining, at worst and stagnant at best. Let’s hope for change in the midterms; however, as one American with whom I had a conversation said, the current incarnation of the Republican Party is dangerous; the Democrats, however, are not dangerous but feckless. He should know he was a Democrat. I suggested that dangerous Republicans looked more like a mix of the 1930s American Liberty League and Charles Lindbergh’s America First Committee and would also include today’s far-right Christian nationalist, Peter Thiel, and Curtis Yarvin; he agreed. At the core of these groups is a disdain for ordinary people, and their belief in a type of “enlightened fascism”
Suneil Sharma
2 September 2026
The Gob 
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