US national debt at the height of the pandemic hit a record $30 trillion

The entire amount of US foreign borrowing, defined as "total government debt" is estimated by the Treasury at $30.012 trillion. The maximum allowable size of the US national debt is set at $ 31.4 trillion, Kommersant reports.

The authorities did not expect that the public debt would reach a critically close to the absolute maximum mark so early. However, the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to the acceleration of the scale of borrowing. Due to the “trillion dollar federal spending” by the US authorities to fight the pandemic, the state had to apply for additional loans.

So, an additional $5 trillion went to unemployment benefits, financial support for small businesses and stimulus payments to the population.

In total, during the pandemic since the end of 2019, the US national debt has grown by $7 trillion. Especially rapid growth was noted in 2021. Due to the huge wave of borrowing, US President Biden at the end of 2021 was forced to raise the maximum allowable ceiling of public debt by another $2.5 trillion, to $31.4 trillion.

Despite the pandemic, the country's GDP in 2021 grew by a record 5.7% since 1984, but this year analysts predict a drop in these figures to 3.8%, which is also associated with the consequences of the pandemic. According to WHO, the United States has become the least prosperous country in the world in terms of covid, having lost the largest number of population due to the epidemic.

Congressmen in the United States predict that the country's public debt will almost double by 2051 and reach a record 202% of GDP. Within another ten years, it will exceed the gross domestic product by 107%, follows from the long-term forecast of the US Congressional Budget Office.

“The growing debt burden increases the risks of a fiscal crisis and inflation. In addition, it could undermine confidence in the US dollar, making it more costly to finance public and private companies internationally,” the report says.

The sharp increase in US public debt over the next thirty years is due to significant injections into the US economy over the past year. By the beginning of March 2021, according to the US Treasury Department, the size of the US public debt had reached $28 trillion, of which about $21 trillion were loans to individuals and legal entities in the US, as well as loans from other countries and foreign organizations. The rest is domestic debt (the federal government borrows from trust funds, such as the Social Security Fund).

The resulting budget deficit, which was estimated at 10.3% of GDP in 2021, will not contribute to the reduction of public debt - this is a record figure since the Second World War. Earlier, analysts compared the crisis that swept America in 2020 with the period of the Great Depression. In 2020, the budget deficit amounted to 14.9% of GDP. Analysts predict that as the economy emerges from the crisis, the US budget deficit will shrink to 5.7% of GDP by 2031. However, within another 20 years it will rise again to a record 13.3% of the gross domestic product.