ben white. president trump promised to pay down the national debt when he was running for president. instead, he s adding to it. this is something that normally infuriates republicans. it did when we saw the deficit of what it was in 2012. many of them, why does it matter anymore? well, it does not matter anymore because president trump is president trump and he does not care about it and the rest of the republican party really follows trump s lead. so that s why essentially it does not matter and it does not matter to a degree because we have very low interest rates and if you kind of manage this deficit at the moement. it is not a crisis for us in the immediate term. it is going to be hard for trump in the campaign trail to say hey, he says he s going to eliminate the national debt and budget. the death is soaring under his watch. take me out of politics and into the american home and
thanks to sofi, i can see the light at the end of the tunnel as of 12pm today, i am debt free not owing anyone anything is the best feeling in the world, i cannot stop smiling about it welcome back to velshi & ruhle. the country s fiscal deficit just smashed $1 trillion. the $1.07 trillion figure is nearly double than it was in 2016 and now it is our highest deficit since 2012. that s bad news for our $22.5 trillion national debt. and the president s campaign promise to eliminate it in eight years. joining me now our correspondent, my dear friend,
kitchen. where and why do numbers like this matter. where does it hit people? it hits people with higher interest rates. when you have a federal government like ours that run trillion dollars annual deficit and as far as i can see. the debt is rising significantly, it is expected to rise. ultimately that means that markets demand higher interests on american debt. this is the long-term thing. if they do then that means your loan costs more. right now they don t but they will. welcome to the planet of short termism. that s where we live. if you are president trump and you said we are not going to get a deficit like this, then he realizes nobody is paying attention to that number. he s pushing interest rates to approach zero. does he even care? no. i think he should long-term he should care.
steph, you remember we almost shut the government down, breached the debt limit under obama because republicans were so worried of deficit. he should not care that much because americans don t care that much. right now there is no big cost to it. there is nothing that s hurting us in the short term. it is frustrating to those of us who cares about the long-term and trajectory of the debt and a portion of the u.s. budget and the economy that it is going to be bad long-term. trump does not care about anything and that s where we are. we should always care about everything. actress felicity huffman just aririved in court. she will be sentenced for her role in the college scandal. she said she was trying to get a quote, fair shot, i am going to say it one more time a fair
democracy and that makes it more won t go away. they won t into the chinese mainland any time in the foreseeable future. we need to acknowledge that and think what relationship should we have for taiwan in an american strategy with china. bill: do you think beijing is concerned about this? yes or no. absolutely. they should be. every time beijing growls and american foreign establishment says you better not do anything that might irritate beijing. it gets what it wants. there is no give and take. though announce what their view is and everybody says beijing holds a lot of american debt. we ll have to give in. if we put other things on the table. china has declared the south china sea a province of china. that s unacceptable to us. they want to talk about greater american military cooperation