Image: Neue Zürcher Zeitung
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the country’s federal debt exceeds $36.2 trillion—about 122% of U.S. GDP. In the last 25 years alone, it has more than quadrupled, and debt service costs continue to rise in tandem with interest rates.
In an editorial, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung notes that the problem lies not so much in the size of the debt itself as in the lack of political will to halt its growth. The publication reaches a harsh conclusion: The United States appears to be focusing less and less on reducing its debt burden, counting on its real value to decline over time due to inflation, economic growth, or a weaker dollar.
“America does not want to repay its debts, and one day its creditors will have to pay the price for this,” the author concludes.
According to analysts’ estimates, a significant portion of U.S. debt is held by domestic investors and government funds, but about a quarter is held by foreign creditors. Japan, the United Kingdom, and China remain the largest holders of U.S. Treasury bonds.
It’s Not About the Size of the Debt
Despite record-high debt levels, U.S. government bonds are still considered one of the key safe-haven assets of the global financial system.
However, further debt growth, rising budget deficits, and the political inability to stabilize public finances are fueling debate about the long-term sustainability of the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency.
The Swiss publication emphasizes that the problem lies not in the size of the debt itself, but in the inability—and even the unwillingness—of U.S. authorities to radically change the economic paradigm when debt is growing faster than the economy.
“Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are doing nothing to improve the situation,” writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. “In 2025, the spending-cut commission led by Elon Musk mostly just sowed chaos before the tech entrepreneur abandoned the project and returned to simpler tasks, such as colonizing Mars.
They failed to achieve significant savings—quite the opposite, in fact. In the summer of 2025, the president pushed through new tax breaks to fulfill his campaign promises. Now he wants to increase military spending by another $400–500 billion. At the same time, these calculations still do not take into account that, due to the war with Iran, the U.S. will have to make massive additional purchases of expensive missiles. Trump’s favorite tariffs won’t be able to plug the huge hole in the budget either.”
Drawing a conclusion from all this, the publication states: the question is no longer just how large the U.S. debt is, but how the world’s largest economy intends to live with it in the coming decades.
