The deficit is an illusion. We owe most of it to ourselves. The real problem is balance of trade and steady deindustrialization, which no administration has been able to tackle yet.

It’s a question of inputs and outputs.

Right now we’re moving towards more balanced trade by shipping gold overseas. Nonmonetary gold and metals are our largest export YTD. That’s not going to work forever.

We need to take one on the chin and allow the currency to devalue versus gold, then revalue the gold reserves which haven’t been revalued since 1973. It will result in some short term pain, but it doesn’t have to fall in the usual distribution. (Distribution of financial pain is a policy choice.)

Only after the currency is weakened will manufacturing return home. Gold revaluation can be used to buy back some bonds to reduce the interest expense.

Edit: to the drive by downvotes, if you’ve got a better idea then free to share it. This is the only option I’ve seen recently that may work before we’re in a total crisis. I don’t love it either, but this actually puts the process in our control rather than having it happen involuntarily. Continued devaluation of the dollar is guaranteed at this point.

I think the downvotes are mostly due to the gold thing. it sounds...deranged