The world’s newest emerging market

YOU do not have to place your ear to the ground to hear the rumble. People are saying what was once unthinkable: The US could be headed towards a public-debt crisis.

One common refrain is that the US has been behaving like an emerging market since President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” on Apr 2, when he declared a tariff war on the world. What exactly does that mean? And what do we know from emerging markets about how debt crises happen?

Here is the cleverest definition of an emerging market: one from which you cannot emerge in an emergency. But that does not yet apply to the US, where huge and liquid markets mean you can always get out, even if you lose money in the process.