- Ray Dalio warns the U.S. faces an imminent debt crisis as its debt-to-GDP ratio climbs past 122%, with experts worried foreign buyers will pull back or raise interest payments, making borrowing unsustainable. He suggests drastic measures may be needed, including debt restructuring, political pressure on buyers, and potentially cutting payments to certain countries.
While Wall Street might be battening down the hatches against Trump’s tariff rhetoric and nervously eyeing foreign relations, the fundamentals of the economy are still looking relatively good.
GDP over the past couple of quarters has been steadily ticking upwards, while inflation and unemployment are similarly stable.
But what will rock the boat is America’s national debt, Ray Dalio has warned, and it’s a crisis coming down the pipe “imminently.”
Speaking at CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore, the Bridgewater founder explained, “We have a very severe supply and demand problem. Some people think we’ll handle it because we’ve handled it so far. I don’t think they understand the mechanics of debt.”
What is concerning experts like Dalio now more so than in the past is America’s debt-to-GDP ratio: the amount Uncle Sam owes in comparison to the value of its output and hence, how capable it is to repay its debts.
In 2013, Amercia’s debt went beyond the value of what it produces and, at the time of writing, has risen to 122% of GDP, per the St Louis Fed.
This figure is also set to swing even higher—a sweep made all the more dramatic by the increasing burden of interest payments required to bankroll the debt. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects the ratio to reach 166% of GDP in 2054 and “remain on track to increase thereafter.”
Dalio continued that, at some point, the U.S. will have to “sell a quantity of debt that the world is not going to want to buy.” This is an “imminent” scenario of “paramount importance,” Dalio said.
The man worth $16.2 billion isn’t the only economic expert to have this opinion. Wharton Business School finance professor Joao Gomes previously told Fortune: “The most important thing about debt for people to keep in mind is you need somebody to buy it. We used to be able to count on China, Japanese investors, the Fed to [buy the debt]. All those players are slowly going away and are actually now selling.
“If at some moment these folks that have so far been happy to buy government debt from major economies decide, ‘You know what, I’m not too sure if this is a good investment anymore. I’m going to ask for a higher interest rate to be persuaded to hold this,’ then we could have a real accident on our hands.”
Dealing with debt
Dalio said running a yearly federal budget deficit of 7.2% of GDP was far too high, suggesting this figure needed to be closer to 3%.
“You are going to see shocking developments in terms of how [debt] is going to be dealt with,” Dalio continued.
Asked whether this may be austerity measures, Dalio hinted that may not be the worse outcome: “What do you do when you don’t have an adequate supply and demand balance?
“There may be restructurings of debt, there may be exerting pressures on countries to buy the debt, to own the debt, political pressures on countries. There may be cutting the payments to some predator countries off for political reasons, there may be monetizations of debt.”
President Trump has certainly demonstrated he’s not shy about exerting economic pressure in order to achieve his aims. A look over his executive orders since taking office are evidence enough.
However, in stretching his relationships with America’s closest partners like Canada, Mexico, and the EU, the Oval Office may also have lost some of its goodwill with the nations that once would have rushed to its rescue.
“If you look at history and see the repeating of what do countries do when they’re in this kind of situation, there are lessons from history that repeat. Just as we are seeing political and geopolitical shifts that seem unimaginable to most people, if you just look at history, you will see these things repeating over and over again,” Dalio said.
He added: “We will be surprised by some of the developments that will seem equally shocking as those developments that we have seen.”
