What Mike Tyson and the Bond Market Can Teach Trump on Debt

“Everyone has a plan, till they get punched in the face,” the former heavyweight champion and ear gourmand Mike Tyson once said. Swapping the boxing ring for the government arena, everyone has a plan for whittling down America’s debt, until they get punched by the bond market.

President Donald Trump’s own plan for managing the debt can be boiled down to something like this. On the spending side, make drastic cuts to the government workforce and pare back programs such as Medicaid and clean energy subsidies that don’t align with his political priorities. On the revenue side, extend the tax cuts from his first term, with money collected from higher tariffs filling in most of the gap. Following the logic of the infamous Laffer curve, tax cuts will stimulate the economy, so that government income rises even as rates fall.