It may have faded into the background as inflation dominates America’s economic headlines, but the national debt is still skyrocketing. In just the last year it surged by over $2 trillion to a total of $36.2 trillion. The debt raises dangers of stagnant economic growth and higher interest rates. The proposed solutions typically entail spending cuts and tax increases. But there’s an alternative, and a number of proposals from the Trump Administration hint at it: raising revenue by leveraging American resources and geopolitical power. 

Revenue-generating measures like sovereign wealth funds, resource extraction, and monetizing citizenship are already practiced by successful city states like Singapore and Dubai, and peer into a future of for-profit governance. These measures can be duplicated by America to pay down debt and ensure economic growth, while fundamentally transforming the way U.S. governance works. Unlike relying on a tax-and-spend strategy that is premised on involuntary confiscation, we could shift to raising money through enterprises that profit through voluntary exchange. 

Monetizing Citizenship

Various countries offer citizenship or residency rights to foreigners in exchange for their economic contributions, via so-called “golden visa” and “citizenship-by-investment” programs. 

The United Arab Emirates offers a long-term residency visa—the “Golden Visa”—to investors, entrepreneurs, and individuals with exceptional skills in fields like science and technology. The 10-year visa can be obtained, for example, by making a minimum investment of $550,000 in an emirati-approved investment fund.

Similar programs exist in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. Malta offers direct citizenship through its Maltese Citizenship by Naturalization for Exceptional Services (CES) program, which requires a combination of substantial donations and investments. In the Caribbean, St. Kitts & Nevis runs one of the world’s oldest citizenship-by-investment programs, granting a passport in exchange for a qualifying investment, typically in real estate or a government development fund. 

President Trump recently suggested a similar proposal that would require a $5 million minimum investment in exchange for a streamlined path to U.S. citizenship. The idea is that something this valuable–access to the U.S. economy and legal system–shouldn’t just be given away to anyone who illegally trespasses across our border.

Expanding Natural Resource Extraction

Another promising avenue Trump has sought to explore is opening the 640 million acres of federally-owned land to resource extraction. This is notable with rare earth materials in particular, which are chiefly exported from China. Companies and researchers have already begun exploring ways to improve access to these minerals from U.S. soil.  Similarly, expanding oil and natural gas drilling would reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil; the administration has already announced intent to remove restrictions on drilling in Alaska. 

Doing so could prove a more economically beneficial way to improve U.S. manufacturing capacity than subsidizing American companies and taxing imports (which Trump also wants to do, unfortunately). And if access to these lands were sold or leased at fair market value, that would create revenue.

Trump has even discussed acquiring Greenland as a resource play. If such foreign land acquisitions cost less than the revenue they generate, there should be no limit to such neo-expansionism. 

Sovereign Wealth Funds

A number of wealthy countries have sovereign wealth funds as a means of monetizing assets. While they make generalized stock and bond investments, as any hedge fund would, they’re also known to make domestic infrastructure or real estate plays that advance the interests of the respective nation. The idea, again, is to make a return on investment by being a lender or shareholder, rather than paying interest the way debt-ridden countries do.

Norway has perhaps the best-known such fund in the western world, deriving its proceeds from energy sales. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority now has a value as high as $900 billion and invests in a variety of sectors, as does Temasek Holdings in Singapore.

President Trump recently signed an executive order to create an American sovereign wealth fund. With trillions in land, infrastructure, and intellectual property, the United States has ample opportunity to establish such a fund. 

Conclusion

The point of all this profit-seeking is for the U.S. to generate revenue and pay down debt, so that we don’t just become another debt-prone European-style welfare state. This would bring the US more in line with the concept of competitive governance, a profit-based model that is already powering international special economic zones and startup cities. It’s refreshing to have these ideas on the table. 

Trump, to his credit, is also looking into that: during his 2024 campaign he proposed 10 “freedom cities”, or alternative governing models that can be set up on U.S. federal land and immune from state regulation. It’s a campaign promise he ought to keep.

High taxes and debt are sometimes treated as inevitable. But the for-profit governance models displayed by countries like Singapore and the UAE show that this need not be the case. Such countries have little to no taxes, yet great infrastructure–much of which is privatized, or paid for from other investments. The U.S. has immense economic value, and it’s largely held back by a poor framework for thinking about governance. The Trump administration ought to pursue these measures and not let them disappear into the void of empty talk. 

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