How much did the federal budget deficit increase each year during Donald Trump's first term (2017-2020)?
Executive summary
Across President Trump’s first term, reporting shows federal budget deficits rose, with a sharp jump in 2020 tied to the pandemic response; available sources document deficits reaching roughly $1 trillion by 2019 and then expanding to about $3 trillion in 2020 [1] [2]. The record of incremental, year‑by‑year dollar changes is discussed in aggregate by watchdogs and think tanks, but the provided reporting does not supply a complete, sourced list of each fiscal year’s deficit dollar-to-dollar change for 2017→2018→2019→2020, so this analysis combines the specific figures reported with the contextual explanations offered by those sources [3] [4].
1. The trajectory: modest growth then a pandemic spike
Multiple accounts agree the deficit rose over Trump’s first four fiscal years, culminating in an unprecedented 2020 increase driven by emergency pandemic spending; the deficit in fiscal year 2020 reached about $3 trillion, the largest peacetime shortfall as a share of GDP [2]. Before the pandemic, deficits were increasing year-to-year as a consequence of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and later bipartisan spending bills—the Manhattan Institute and Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget both document that deficits exceeded earlier projections during each of Trump’s years and that the tax cut in particular reduced revenues substantially [2] [3].
2. What the sources give as hard numbers (and what they don’t)
Reporting explicitly states the deficit was “nearly $1 trillion” by 2019, a roughly 50% rise compared with earlier years, and then soared to about $3 trillion in 2020 amid the CARES Act and other relief measures [1] [2]. Several watchdogs and budget analysts quantify the major legislative drivers—CRFB and others attribute roughly $1.9 trillion of borrowing tied to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and another $1.9 trillion to the CARES Act—yet the supplied sources do not include a complete, sourced table of the official Treasury or CBO fiscal‑year deficit totals for every year 2017–2020 in sequence [3].
3. The year‑over‑year increases that can be documented from supplied reporting
From the sources provided, two concrete year markers emerge: by 2019 the annual deficit was “nearly $1 trillion” and by 2020 it reached approximately $3 trillion, implying an increase on the order of roughly $2 trillion between 2019 and 2020 [1] [2]. The reporting also characterizes the 2017–2019 years as a period of steady deficit growth driven by tax cuts and discretionary spending increases, but it does not supply precise, sourced dollar increases for 2017→2018 and 2018→2019 within the documents provided here [2] [3].
4. Why precise year‑to‑year numbers matter — and why sources differ
Analysts disagree on attribution: some emphasize legislative choices (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Bipartisan Budget Acts) as the main causes of the pre‑pandemic deficit growth [3] [4], while others note the pandemic’s one‑off fiscal shock dwarfed prior changes [2]. Political actors and committees have incentives—House Budget Committee materials and partisan fact checks show competing framings about how much each administration “added” to debt projections—which complicates simple year‑by‑year claim and motivates reliance on CBO and Treasury raw fiscal‑year data for definitive numbers [5] [6].
5. Bottom line and a transparency caveat
Bottom line: the provided sources document deficits rising to nearly $1 trillion in 2019 and then jumping to roughly $3 trillion in 2020, an increase of about $2 trillion between those two fiscal years, and they describe steady deficit increases through 2017–2019 tied to the 2017 tax law and later spending bills [1] [2] [3]. However, the supplied reporting does not contain a full, sourced year‑by‑year table of the exact dollar increase for each transition 2017→2018, 2018→2019 and 2019→2020; obtaining those precise, annual deficit deltas requires consulting primary CBO or Treasury fiscal‑year tables not included among the provided documents [7].