Who owes America $31.4 trillion?

In isolation, this $7.4 trillion amount is enormous, said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “But the way an economist looks at it is he says, ‘Well, how does this compare to the size of our economy?'” he said. 

And when you do that, the amount of debt we owe to other countries isn’t “particularly problematic,” Morris said.