{"id":440285,"date":"2026-10-17T02:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T19:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-fiscal-2026-budget-deficit-was-the-largest-in-five-years-440285\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T02:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T19:40:06","slug":"us-fiscal-2026-budget-deficit-was-the-largest-in-five-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-fiscal-2026-budget-deficit-was-the-largest-in-five-years-440285\/","title":{"rendered":"US fiscal 2026 budget deficit was the largest in five years"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul dir=\"ltr\">\n<li>September 2025 was a $198B surplus<\/li>\n<li>Outlays $585B vs $346B a year ago<\/li>\n<li>Receipts $558B vs $544B a year ago<\/li>\n<li>FY2026 deficit $1.992 trillion vs $1.775T in FY2025, the largest in five years<\/li>\n<li>FY2026 gross interest on the debt: record $1.36T, up $144B (12%)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Interest is now the main driver of the deficit. The $144B rise in interest costs accounts for about two-thirds of the $217B increase in the full-year shortfall. Treasury will keep rolling debt at higher rates while the Fed is debating hikes rather than cuts, so that line has nowhere to go but up.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The customs numbers are the most interesting part of the release.\u00a0Gross customs receipts were $25.27B, roughly in line with the recent run rate. But refunds of $19.36B ate up 77% of that, leaving net customs receipts of just $5.91B.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The monthly swing from a $198B surplus to a $27B deficit is mostly about outlays, which jumped $239B y\/y while receipts rose only 2.6%. Year-ago September comparisons are notoriously noisy because of payment timing, so the full-year number is the one that matters.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In any case, the headline tells most of the story as the US is in a huge fiscal hole and these are the good times for growth right now. There are going to be some very ugly days ahead and there&#8217;s no way to grow out of it.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>September 2025 was a $198B surplus Outlays $585B vs $346B a year ago Receipts $558B vs $544B a year ago FY2026 deficit $1.992 trillion vs $1.775T in FY2025, the largest in five&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}