IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY

Trump Suggests Stock-Market Gains Are ‘Reducing Debt’

Says he’s “honored” that market-index rises are cutting the national debt. They aren’t.

President Trump on Wednesday praised his administration for “in a sense reducing debt” with recent gains in the stock market. In an interview with Fox News, the president seemed to suggest that stock-market gains had wiped out part of the country’s national debt. “The country—we took it over and owed over $20 trillion. As you know the last eight years, they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country. So they borrowed more than $10 trillion, right? And yet, we picked up $5.2 trillion just in the stock market,” Trump told Sean Hannity. “So you could say, in one sense, we’re really increasing values. And maybe in a sense, we’re reducing debt. But we’re very honored by it,” he said. It was not clear whether Trump understood that the stock market and federal debt levels are not in any way connected.