The U.S. national debt has crossed the $40 trillion threshold, and roughly one-fourth of that total has been incurred while President Donald Trump has been in office, according to Treasury Department data.

Federal spending has accelerated dramatically as the U.S. population has aged. Rising enrollment in Social Security and Medicare has pushed spending on those entitlement programs higher, contributing to the growth of federal budget deficits. The recent rise in interest rates, coupled with the larger national debt, has exacerbated that trend, with interest expenses from servicing the national debt now topping $1 trillion per year. That annual interest bill has grown to rival or exceed major federal budget categories such as defense spending, showing how borrowing costs increasingly compete with program outlays for federal dollars.

Presidents and congressional majorities of both parties bear responsibility for the growth in the national debt. Even so, Trump's first term and the opening half of his second term have seen the debt grow by more than $11.5 trillion combined to date, according to Treasury Department data.

White House spokesman Kush Desai pointed to Trump's predecessor in a statement to FOX Business: "Cleaning up Joe Biden's reckless fiscal mismanagement has been a top priority for the Trump administration, from slashing waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending to accelerating economic growth and getting America's debt-to-GDP ratio back on the right track."

Debt-to-GDP is the gauge many economists use to weigh government borrowing against the economy's capacity to carry it, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that debt held by the public will climb over the coming decades to a larger share of the economy than at any point since World War II.

How the national debt is measured

The overarching measure of the U.S. national debt used by entities such as the Treasury Department and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is known as the gross national debt, which is nearing $40 trillion. The figure includes all of the U.S. government's debt, including obligations held in intragovernmental accounts such as the Social Security trust funds. Those obligations are excluded from a separate metric, the debt held by the public, which currently stands at more than $32 trillion. The gross debt is also the measure governed by the statutory debt limit, which Congress has raised or suspended dozens of times since 1960.

Trump's first term: from $19.9 trillion to $27.7 trillion

When Trump's first term began on Jan. 20, 2017, the gross national debt totaled $19.9 trillion. A variety of tax and spending policies contributed to the debt's growth during that term, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as well as massive spending on COVID-19 relief measures.

A White House official noted that the country was facing a historic pandemic during the first term, arguing the crisis accounted for a larger share of the debt growth during that period. The official added that Biden "then recklessly spent trillions on COVID stimulus spending" and pointed to how "Obama economists like Larry Summers correctly warned would only ratchet up inflation, which caused interest rates to rise and just worsen the government's borrowing costs."

The largest U.S. budget deficit in history was incurred in fiscal year 2020 — the last full fiscal year of Trump's first term — when the federal government ran a deficit of more than $3.1 trillion. That year, Congress and the president enacted several bipartisan COVID relief measures to help individuals and businesses, as well as state and local governments, as they dealt with the economic toll of the pandemic.

By the end of Trump's first term, the gross national debt had grown by more than $7.8 trillion and stood at more than $27.7 trillion as of Jan. 20, 2021, the day Biden's term began. Over the next four years, the gross national debt grew by more than $8.4 trillion as additional COVID relief measures were enacted and Democratic majorities advanced Biden's American Rescue Plan Act.

Second term adds more than $3.7 trillion to date

When Trump's second term began, Treasury Department data showed the gross national debt totaled $36.2 trillion as of Jan. 21, 2025, the day after his second inauguration. The most recent data shows that as of Aug. 14, 2026, the gross national debt had risen to more than $39.9 trillion — an increase of more than $3.7 trillion during the second Trump term to date. Higher spending on entitlement programs and debt interest, along with tax cuts enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which also raised the statutory debt limit by $5 trillion) and tariff refunds, contributed to the higher debt.

Taken together, the more than $7.8 trillion in debt added during Trump's first term and the $3.7 trillion incurred so far in his second term combine to total about $11.5 trillion in debt accumulated during his time in office.

Source: Fox Business