Why the US government keeps shutting down

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CHART 1 • Why the US government keeps shutting down

The latest US government shutdown has just ended after 43 days, the longest in history. It feels dramatic when viewed on its own. But when you look at the chart, it falls neatly into a trend that has been developing for decades.

Shutdowns that were once short and infrequent have become longer and more regular. They now occur under both Republican and Democratic control, which tells us this is not a partisan quirk but a structural feature of modern US politics. The longest disruptions cluster in periods when the White House and Congress are split. That is when a routine budget bill turns into a power struggle.

Seen through the chart, the recent shutdown is less a surprise and more a symptom. Each episode reinforces the idea that withholding funding is an acceptable tool of negotiation. Markets have adapted to the ritual and barely react anymore, but the underlying message of the data is harder to ignore: shutdowns are becoming embedded in the system itself.

The question is no longer why they happen, but how much longer America can treat basic government funding as a bargaining chip without weakening its own ability to govern.

Source: Bloomberg

What worries me most is the normalisation of the US government shutdown. A shutdown used to be a line no one wanted to cross. Now it is another tool in Washington gridlock and the hidden cost is competence. Institutions lose muscle when they stop planning for the long term and political brinkmanship becomes routine.

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