Les chiffres nouveaux

With the start of the new US Federal fiscal year, we have new debt-and-deficit figures. And following the same methodology as for the past fifteen years, we get the remarkable result that the Federal budget deficit actually shrank during the Trump administration. It doubled during the first two years, was on track to double again for 2019-2020 before COVID hit, and actually quadrupled instead as a result of COVID. But the 2020-2021 deficit was completely erased by inflation: the national debt grew by slightly less than the rate of inflation. (It's possible that the deficit looks smaller than it "really" was because the Federal Reserve started taking "extraordinary measures", i.e. accounting tricks, towards the end of the fiscal year to avoid the debt limit. I haven't checked on that yet.)

That said, the Trump administration (including COVID) oversaw almost twice as much accrued debt per year as the G.W. Bush administration (including the 2008 recession). Likewise, the pre-crisis Trump administration (cutting off at December 2019) oversaw almost twice as much accrued debt per year as the pre-crisis G.W. Bush administration (cutting off at September 2008).