American Hartford Gold President Max Baecker says the U.S. may need an artificial intelligence and robotics boom alongside major spending cuts to get its roughly $40 trillion debt burden under control.
The Trump administration’s DOGE tried to tackle spending, Baecker told Benzinga in an exclusive interview, but those efforts amounted to “throwing buckets of water off the Titanic.”
Can AI Help Tackle $40 Trillion Debt?
The U.S. ran an estimated $2 trillion deficit in fiscal 2026, while interest costs reached a record $1.1 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
“I don’t know what scenario we’re going to need to really get that under control,” Baecker said.
One possible route would require AI and robotics to deliver an extraordinary increase in economic output, an argument Baecker credited to Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.
“You’re really going to need AI and robotics and everything to do its thing, like Elon says,” Baecker said. “But you would need that to happen while you’re cutting.”
“That’s kind of a perfect scenario, threading the needle,” he added. “I don’t know if it’s possible.”
Musk has previously called AI- and robotics-driven growth the “only way” to manage the debt burden, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the U.S. could “grow our way out” of its debt with annual economic growth of around 3%.
Traders See Debt Climbing Further
Prediction market traders expect the debt pile to keep growing.
Kalshi traders put a 61% chance on U.S. national debt reaching $47.5 trillion during President Donald Trump’s current term and a 22% chance of it hitting $50 trillion. The market has attracted about $117,000 in volume.
Why It Matters for Gold
Baecker’s concern is less that countries will suddenly stop using the U.S. dollar and more that persistent deficits and rising debt gradually erode what the currency can buy.
“Not so much in de-dollarization, more about… dollar debasement,” he said. “I think the dollar remains pretty strong globally.”
“People getting out of dollars, getting into gold,” Baecker said. “That’s why we’ve seen gold run up as well as silver.”
Baecker said central-bank buying helped drive much of gold’s initial rally last year, before speculative enthusiasm pushed prices even higher.
He compared the final stage of the move to “meme stock mania,” saying fear of missing out produced a “blow-off top” in gold and an even sharper move in silver.
SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD) closed Friday at $380.14, about 25% below its January peak.
Baecker tied the pullback to a stronger dollar and the swing from expected rate cuts to talk of hikes, but he remains bullish on gold over the longer term.
“When interest rates fall, that’s when I think gold will start to kick back in again,” he said.
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