President Trump in the Oval Office. February 13, 2025.
What America Owes vs What it Owns
In a time of much controversy, one thing remains constant: Donald Trump is a controversial leader. The Trump administration’s secretary of interior, Doug Burgum, has an idea: America needs to understand the importance of its balance sheet: what it owes and what it owns.
Sec. Burgum, reports the WSJ, thinks there is a better way for America to look at its financial picture: via “America’s Balance Sheet.”
Federal scribes minutely document everything the country owes—in entitlements, debt payments, employee pensions and tax credits. Everyone knows that the liability side includes $36.5 trillion in national debt.
Has America ignored the value of what it owns? America owns enormous stores of oil, coal, minerals, timber, and geothermal power. Each one is held within a vast property portfolio.
Is taxation the only way of generating revenue?
… if the Interior Department were a going concern, Mr. Burgum noted at a March CERAWeek conference, it would have the “largest balance sheet in the world.” Its holdings encompass 480 million surface acres, more than 2 billion offshore acres, and 750 million acres of subsurface minerals.
Saudi Princes, Eat Your Hearts Out
Donald Trump’s mindset is to unleash America’s energy. Trump’s project helped produce one of the standouts so far of the GOP’s reconciliation project, reports Kimberley Strassel:
The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday passed its piece of that reform, a bill that would produce at least $18 billion in new revenue and savings by taking advantage of U.S. resources. It would reinstate quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales, rev up Alaska drilling, get the feds back in the business of coal and timber production, and require geothermal lease sales.
This is but a small step. Let’s look at a “mind-boggling fact,” invites Ms. Strassel. Not surprising from a dysfunctional DC, “the U.S. government has no idea what it’s worth.”
Yes, the feds compile an annual U.S. financial report that includes a “balance sheet,” but it mostly lists assets as cash and loans receivable and mostly ignores federal resources. And while Interior does update some oil and gas estimates, huge areas remain unmapped or undervalued, while other resources are entirely ignored.
What Are Coal Reserves Worth?
With overseas demand surging, one internal U.S. Geological Survey estimate puts the potential value at an impressive $8 trillion.
Still, nobody knows. Even some of the government’s better estimates—for oil and gas—suffer from retrograde regulation. Interior only a few weeks ago announced it would allow new parameters for “downhole commingling” in the Gulf of Mexico, which is expected to boost oil production by 10%, or 100,000 barrels a day.
That explains why Doug Burgum is making a wonky addition to the “drill, baby, drill” mantra: “Map, baby, map.” Burgum wants USGS to refocus on pinpointing and estimating resources rather than its recent climate obsession, adds KS. There are other agencies, too:
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently released an updated assessment of Gulf oil and gas reserves that included 18 new discoveries, resulting in a 23% increase in reserve estimates. One big priority is getting a grip on the U.S.’s sizable store of “critical” minerals—those that play a role in national defense and critical technology, for which we are currently reliant on China. Mining those means not only money but security, yet USGS has mapped only a fraction.
Assets fixed forever result in little. Hard choices will come from making America’s balance sheet legit. Important steps from the Trump administration include “reforms to the permit process (necessary for projects even to happen), reversing Biden’s effort to put huge areas of the ocean and Alaska off limits, and calling for a 25% increase in timber production.”
Congress, however, needs to rethink its approach. For example, “it doesn’t even charge royalties for some types of mining.”
Republicans’ challenge is to get Americans invested in the program. Will the GOP have the courage to demand “fair taxpayer return?” Burgum suggests that an honest market valuation of U.S. land assets could even reduce the “long-term interest rate,” which might be a bit fanciful, given nobody is about to let the Chinese seize Yellowstone in the event of an unpaid debt.
Value in America, Inc.
Doug Burgum’s refreshing approach harkens to America’s original promise. Early conservationists often embraced the common-sense view that America’s national lands, given their vastness, should serve the multiple goals of preservation, recreation, and development. Only in more modern times did the political family impose a rigid “lock it up” attitude that has turned the federal portfolio into a money pit. Even in progressive Oregon, slogging revenue funds schools.
The private sector is more apt to appreciate that land is among America’s greatest assets. Only in America is land a liability. The fed accomplished this rare feat, explains Ms. Strassel, by putting its holdings at immediate risk of fire, insects, or disease due to pathetic management.”
There is no excuse for Congress to shirk its “pressing duty” to get its fiscal house in order. Republicans might instead look to America’s assets to help pay down its debt, advises Ms. Strassel.
That’s what smart companies do, and it turns out America Inc. still has a lot of value.
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