‘Starve the beast’? The $40tn cost of Republicans’ false promises to cut spending
The enormous US debt under Trump will hobble the next Democratic administration – just as the GOP planned Why is the Trump administration causing turmoil in the bond markets? You could pin the US’s staggering $40tn in government debt to Donald Trump’s Keystone Cops-style governance. Tariffs he sold as a new source of revenue were struck down by the supreme court, forcing the government to return…
The gargantuan US debt, soaring to $40tn under the Trump administration, has created turmoil in bond markets, a situation that the Republican Party deliberately engineered. The strategy, known as "starve the beast", aimed to cripple the next Democratic administration's ability to govern by reducing government spending.
Trump's tariffs, which he touted as a new revenue source, were dismissed by the Supreme Court, forcing the government to return hundreds of billions of dollars to importers. Despite the creation of Elon Musk's "department of government efficiency" (Doge), which purportedly aimed to eliminate wasteful spending, it ended up decimating federal programs and potentially costing millions of lives, all while failing to address the budget deficit.
The surge in inflation following Trump's misguided foreign policy in Iran further exacerbated the situation by raising the cost of servicing the government's obligations. The federal debt, which had been around $35tn when Trump assumed office less than two years ago, has now reached an all-time high of $40tn. This unprecedented level of indebtedness is a direct result of a long-standing Republican strategy aimed at "starving the beast" of public funds.
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