Trump: Growth will fix national debt. Reality: In your dreams, Mr. Prez
Soon after the recent announcement that the U.S. national debt topped $40 trillion, President Trump was asked by reporters what he was going to do about it.
The president’s dismissive answer? “The way you take care of debt is with growth … we’ve never had growth like we have right now … the growth will take care of that very easily.”
No one challenged him, but the fact is that Trump’s response began with a lie.
At 2.2%, our current economic growth rate is about average, not nearly as strong as Trump makes it out to be. More relevant — and what Trump failed to mention —is the fact that our debt has been increasing faster than our growth rate.
Trump’s blow-off of our nation’s long term debt, claiming that natural economic growth will take care of it, is glib and seems to be his administration’s take on the subject. Speaking as a co-promoter of Trump's fantasy, Treasury Secretary Bessent’s recent assurances that the debt will vanish if we maintain a 3% annual growth rate has no support that I can find anywhere outside the administration.
Meantime, the debt burden will grow by $7 billion dollars at the end of today and at the end of every day for the foreseeable future.
As to the community of economists that study these things, what do they think about Trump and Bessent’s projections?
They’re uniformly skeptical.
First off, let’s go to Trump’s alma matter, The Wharton School. Kent Smetters, a professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton, used the Penn Wharton Budget Model to conclude that the Trump/Bessent scenario is “pretty clearly” not feasible.
The Council on Foreign Relations notes that an annual 3% growth rate is tough to achieve, having reached that milestone just five times in the past 25 years. Concludes the Council, “Bessent’s call for complacence is therefore dangerous” and that “it is reckless for Washington to declare the debt problem solved by simply adopting unrealistic projections.”
Last summer, the Government Accountability Office subtitled a report on the nation’s fiscal health. It’s titled “Urgent and Sustained Action Needed to Improve the Fiscal Outlook” and it states that “publicly held debt is projected to grow more than twice as fast as the economy over the next 10 years, reaching 123% of the size of the economy in 2036.”
In all the negative language in these analyses, “unrealistic projections” is the most striking phrase. Why? Because it’s consistent with Trump’s cascade of unfulfilled promises. After the litany of lies and illusory expectations (prices will come down on day one, other nations pay tariffs, the war in Iran will be over in a few weeks) that he has promoted, Trump’s unsupportable claim that growth will take care of the nation’s debt is typical of his hopelessly debunked rhetoric. It fits his pattern of saying anything to suit an occasion where he thinks people are uninformed enough to believe him.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.
Photo: national debt in 2012. It’s now $40 trillion and growing — public domain, wikimedia commons
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