President Trump vowed on Sunday to send at least $2,000 to most Americans, drawing on the revenues produced by his unilaterally imposed tariffs on imports from countries around the world.
“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump said on his social media platform. “We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. ... A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
In addition to the promised checks, Trump said he has found another use for the revenues: “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion.”
The administration argued just last week in front of the Supreme Court that revenues were an incidental factor with the tariffs, which the solicitor general said have been put in place as part of Trump’s diplomatic strategy. But that didn’t prevent Trump from once again highlighting – and grossly exaggerating – the fiscal effects of the tariffs.
Math challenges: Trump has repeatedly talked up the “trillions” that are “pouring into” the country – phrasing that implies that the tariff revenues are coming from foreign sources. But tariffs are essentially a domestic tax paid by U.S. importers, with the cost largely passed onto consumers, so any “dividends” from the revenues would be more like rebates, reimbursing Americans for the higher prices produced by the historically high tariff rates.
In terms of available funds, it’s unlikely that the tariff revenue could cover the cost of sending $2,000 checks to most Americans, though much depends on how such a program would be designed.
Philanthropist John Arnold did some back-of-the-envelope calculations that produced an estimated cost of more than half a trillion dollars. “Cost of proposed $2000 tariff dividend: 270 million people in US over 18 * $2000 - 5% (?) deemed rich = $513 billion,” he wrote on X. If children were included, too, the cost would rise to $660 billion.
According to Erica York of the Tax Foundation, Trump’s new tariffs have produced about $120 billion in additional revenue so far, above what would have been collected from pre-Trump tariff rates. York estimates that the Trump tariffs will produce about $217 billion in revenue in 2026, though some estimates put that number closer to $300 billion.
As for the idea that the revenues will start producing budget surpluses that can be used to reduce the federal debt, the Manhattan Institute’s Jessica Riedl said it’s “completely detached from reality.”
“It's like announcing that 2+2=purple,” Riedl added.
Political challenges: Trump cannot issue checks on his own, and there doesn’t appear to be a coordinated political effort to send out money at the moment.
Asked about Trump’s idea this weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said there is no formal proposal for providing “dividend” checks. He also suggested that the payments could simply be the payoff from Republicans’ big tax bill.
“[T]he $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways,” Bessent told ABC News. “It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda — no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security – deductibility on auto loans.”
Still, with Republicans in complete control of Washington, there’s a chance that Trump could try to push a rebate plan through a Congress that tends to embrace his whims. Such a huge expenditure may not go well with some lawmakers, though.
“I don’t see Republicans, especially in the House, going along with this,” Republican strategist Susan Del Percio told MSNBC. “It just doesn’t work for the financial controls that the House wants to have on big spending.”