by
Austin BayApril 9, 2025
he best time to fight a war is when you can win it.
Believing America is still economically innovative and its domestic market the world's biggest, the Trump administration has declared war on Big Debt (U.S. national debt). It is simultaneously pushing for the rapid revival and "reshoring" of the nation's withered, spotty and dangerously offshored manufacturing infrastructure.
I'd like to hear the president call his economic battle what it is: a strategic war for national survival. Fight it now for 2035 is too late.
Big Debt is an old enemy I've essayed several times in the past two decades. In October 2013, I wrote a column assessing the threat Big Debt presented to maintaining a credible U.S. national defense. U.S. national debt on the day I wrote the column was right at $16.95 trillion.
Because it doesn't drop bombs, Big Debt could not be framed as an immediate crisis. Other issues obscured its threat. Collective blame -- we permitted it. Our Congress kept spending money we didn't have. Combating Big Debt also -- many thought, including me -- was a multi-administration effort. Defeating it would take more than a four- or eight-year presidency.
Today the debt is $36 trillion, approaching $37 trillion -- double 12 years ago when it already presented a national security risk capable of undermining America's ability to fight and win a major war.
War takes money. Ask China's great strategist Sun Tzu. Preparing for war takes money. Latin writer Vegetius is credited with this epigram: "If you want peace, prepare for war." If so, then waging peace takes money.
In modern terms, that means establishing and maintaining deterrence -- what Ike and Reagan called peace through strength.
I also hear an echo of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" dictum: "defense ... is of much more importance than opulence" (opulence in his lingo meaning prosperity and wealth accumulation). In other words, the economist of free enterprise says intelligent humans should pay for security of sovereignty before all else. It takes money to develop, produce and maintain modern weapons, recruit, train and pay troops, stockpile war material, and once combat begins, respond to inevitable surprises, replace losses and meet the demands of the battlefield.
So ... if you go broke, you'll very likely lose.
America's enormous current national debt, combined with a shrunken domestic manufacturing base, creates a two-punch economic weakness that calls into question the U.S.'s ability to maintain 21st-century defense forces and sustain them in a multi-year, major war.
A few of the necessary questions: Can the U.S. afford to modernize its military forces? Can the U.S. afford to rebuild its industrial base, particularly its near-nonexistent ship building industry? And this gut check: Can the U.S. afford to wage a sustained major war, particularly against a shipbuilding power like Communist China?
Nuclear-armed mainland China is America's only real near-peer competitor. And all U.S. government policy actions -- economic, diplomatic, military, informational and cultural -- should reflect that fact.
Yes, China has economic weaknesses. But this fact stands: Defeating the threat of Big Debt is critical to both deterring and winning a strategic war for national survival.
Enter Donald Trump. He knew Big Debt was a problem, but his first term was crimped by COVID and the Hillary Clinton/New York Times/Left Media RussiaRussiaRussia hoax.
But he's back attempting to defeat the threat of Big Debt in less than one four-year term. To heck with multi-administration -- Trump says it's now or never, and with $37 trillion in the hole, he's right.
Moreover, he's tied the attack on debt to reviving the industrial base. How? By ending the post-World War II trade and aid program where the U.S. helped Europe, Japan and later South Korea rebuild -- the Marshal Plan became a permanent arrangement where America paid for defense, ran deficits and shared its wealth with its threatened allies.
The arrangement was justified through the end of the Cold War but isn't now. NATO's wealthy European nations can pay their fair share, but only a handful have. The EU's agriculture tariffs and subsidy policies penalize American farmers. Japan should open its market to American rice.
Trump's got a strategy to fight the war when we can still win it.