The U.S. Treasury Didn’t Declare the Country ‘Insolvent’

Two economists — Steve Hanke at Johns Hopkins University and David Walker, a former comptroller general of the U.S. — published an opinion piece in Fortune last month advocating bills aimed at reining in the national debt. In support of this, they pointed to the U.S. Treasury’s financial report on fiscal year 2025, noting that the liabilities for the U.S. government far outweighed the assets and characterizing the government as “insolvent.”

The headline on the March 23 piece — “The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it” — became a viral claim on social media, suggesting that there’s been a major new development in the government’s financial position.

But there hasn’t been. One reader asked us about a post that suggested President Donald Trump was to blame.

“The U.S. Treasury did not declare the U.S. government insolvent,” said Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, who told us that he agreed with the larger point of the opinion piece — that the government’s fiscal policy is imbalanced and in need of change.

The writers cited the most recent annual report from the Treasury, released in March, that listed the government’s total assets for fiscal year 2025 — including cash on hand, federal land and loans owed — as just over $6 trillion. It listed the total liabilities as almost $48 trillion.