US Foreign Debt jumps to 35% of GDP

By Raymond Richman, Howard Richman, and Jesse Richman

On April 21, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected (see the World Economic Outlook, pp. 36-37) that the US foreign debt will increase from about 4.5% of world GDP in 2007 to about 9% in 2009. Given that the US foreign debt was 17.7% of US GDP at the end of 2007, this means that our foreign debt will be about 35% of US GDP by the end of this year as shown in the red line on the graph below

US foreign debt tends to increase when the United States runs a trade deficit on goods and services using money either borrowed from abroad or invested by foreigners in U.S, assets. The black line shows the cumulative effects of US trade deficits since 1987. The black line has been rising every year, except 1991 when the Persian Gulf states gave us huge gifts in return for our liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi control.

The US Foreign Debt does not climb as smoothly as the cumulative trade deficits because the value of American holdings of foreign assets (mostly stocks) tends to fluctuate with stock prices, while the value of foreigners’ holdings in the United States (mostly bonds) tends to be stable.

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