Trump’s Way of Doing Business With the World May Cost All of Us

Ms. Scanlon, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of “In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work” and Kyla’s Newsletter.

America is drowning in debt. It has expanded over years and even decades, but President Trump and his allies in Congress have piled on a giant new load.

In fiscal year 2025, the United States spent roughly $7 trillion and collected about $5.2 trillion in tax revenue. That leaves a $1.8 trillion gap that has to be closed.

There is an enormous tension for an administration that now claims greatness as isolationism and regularly alienates and insults (and worse) global peers but also cannot finance itself without the support of other countries. These two opposing ideas operate at the center of the American debt story.

That is why “America First” does not make sense financially. The United States will no doubt, for the time being, find buyers of its debt — but the cost and terms of those exchanges are shifting as the rest of the world reconsiders its arrangements with President Trump’s way of doing business.

America First is inviting the world to use our debt as a weapon against us.

The government borrows the amount of our deficit by selling Treasury securities, I.O.U.s that promise to pay investors back with interest over time. The United States carried over $30 trillion in publicly held debt in fiscal year 2025, and a significant chunk of that debt matures every year and has to be refinanced at whatever interest rates exist at that moment. So if rates rise, the annual cost of servicing the debt climbs, too — and keeps climbing as more debt turns over. The system holds together as long as the world keeps buying.

And that’s how U.S. capital markets work. Historically, everyone has wanted to own a little bit of the United States. Foreign investors held a record high of over $9.3 trillion in U.S. Treasuries in November 2025. Japan remains the largest holder. Britain is second and mainland China is third, even after reducing its holdings over the past decade.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.

© The New York Times