President Donald Trump promised over the weekend that U.S. citizens would see tangible benefits from his sweeping tariffs.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person” from the tariffs will be paid to “everyone” except for those described as “high-income” people, according to the president.
What has the White House said?
After making the announcement in the Truth Social post on Sunday, the president reiterated that there would be a “dividend” during comments in the Oval Office on Monday.
“We’re going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower-income people of about $2,000, and we’re going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt, we’re going to be lowering our debt, which is a national security thing,” Trump said.
When asked for clarification and specifics about the payments, a White House official told the Washington Examiner that the tariffs are resetting global commerce and safeguarding national and economic security while raising billions of dollars in revenue.
The official said that the United States is committed to putting the money to good use for the public, but didn’t elaborate on specifics about the payments Trump has floated.
What has Bessent said?
Questions are swirling about whether such a dividend is feasible, as some experts have cast doubt on whether the payments could be delivered, particularly given that they likely require authorization from Congress.
So far, Trump’s idea seems more musing than a policy proposal, in light of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments Sunday that he had not spoken to the president about his $2,000 dividend proposal. Bessent suggested consumers might not see a straightforward payment.
“The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways,” Bessent told ABC host George Stephanopoulos. “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 of auto loans.”
The treasury secretary continued to downplay the idea that Americans could see direct $2,000 checks, saying “we don’t have a formal proposal” and that the Trump administration is “not proposing it to the Senate right now.”
Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, has similarly thrown cold water on Trump’s musings.
“He’s brainstorming and trying to help the Senate come up with a deal that can get the government open,” Hassett said during a Sunday interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation.
“The president started this idea yesterday. I don’t think that it’s been discussed widely in the Senate yet. It’s the weekend,” he added.
Would Trump need Congress?
Legally, the power of the purse remains with lawmakers in the House and Senate.
Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, told the Washington Examiner that Trump would need Congress to send out direct payments to Americans.
She pointed out that while Bessent has floated the idea that the tax cuts Congress has already enacted could be the tariff rebates, Trump has been more explicit in his social media messages.
“I mean his latest posts from today actually referenced $2,000 payments to low- and middle-income citizens,” she said. “So that seems very clear. It’s not talking about some abstract, you know, larger tax refund, something like that. His idea is really cutting a $2,000 check to each person.”
Although checks “would be a popular policy,” Stephen Kates, a financial analyst at Bankrate, told CBNC, “direct deposit payments are unlikely to happen without Congress being on board.”
Given increased partisanship in Congress, the payments could be especially difficult to pass across the finish line, Kates added, though other experts have suggested that could change as the 2026 elections near.
“We do not see stimulus checks in the near future, but could see greater Congressional interest as we approach the midterm elections, especially if we see weakness among consumers,” said Raymond James Washington policy analyst Ed Mills in a Nov. 9 research note.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) pointed out that the country’s national debt has now ballooned to $38 trillion.
“I’m not interested in further cuts when we’re $38 trillion in debt,” he said.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) acknowledged that inflation and the cost of living are major issues for voters.
“I think inflation is always one of our biggest concerns coming into the next election, for sure,” he said. “I think the price of gas, the price of groceries will be top of mind for everybody when we come into the election of next year.”
What about the Supreme Court?
Even if Congress were to cut the tariff checks, Trump could be forced to refund billions of dollars already collected in tariff revenue, depending on the outcome of a case involving the levies currently before the Supreme Court. Justices began hearing arguments debating the legality of Trump’s tariffs last week.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), one of the more centrist members of the GOP conference, pointed out the pending Supreme Court decision about tariffs. She said that a ruling against the Trump administration could complicate any form of rebate payments.
“There is a very valid case to be made that if the Supreme Court pushes back on tariffs, we’re going to have to repay that,” she told the Washington Examiner. “Now, as an appropriator, I’m looking at that and saying, all right, where do we find this?”
“So offering $2,000 to everybody out of the tariff proceeds now may be a little bit risky,” Murkowski added.
“If the Supreme Court rules against the tariffs, the tariffs then need to be repaid,” Brett House, economics professor at Columbia Business School, said. “So all that money is potentially going back to the businesses that imported goods, and any of the money that would be financing this broader rebate wouldn’t be there.”
Have direct payments ever been done before?
The U.S. does have a history of sending direct payments to the public, albeit through general taxpayer dollars as opposed to the tariff payments Trump hopes would be funded by foreign importers.
In 2008, then-President George W. Bush mailed out “rebate checks” of up to $600 per person to help the public deal with the financial crash.
In 2020, the first Trump administration handed out two rounds of stimulus checks to the public as the country grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic. Those payments were passed by Congress and then signed by Trump.
The following year, the Biden administration similarly sent out a third round of stimulus checks, again authorized by Congress.
Is there enough money for tariff checks?
Some lawmakers have shown interest in using tariffs to issue similar checks to the public.
Over the summer, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a bill seeking to give at least $600 to qualifying individuals from the revenue generated by tariffs.
But even if Hawley’s American Worker Rebate Act, which never made it out of committee, gained traction, there remain sweeping questions about whether there is enough revenue from Trump’s tariffs to send out $2,000 payments to voters.
“Even with the most conservative estimates applied to it, it doesn’t work,” York told National Public Radio.
If the rebates went to people making under $100,000 per year, that would cost way more than the amount of revenue tariffs would bring in, according to her math.
“So you’ll see at least a $100 billion gap there between what we can expect the tariffs to generate for the U.S. government versus what the president is promising to spend on tariff rebates for American citizens,” York said on X.
The Trump administration has so far collected around $200 billion in tariff revenue, according to the Treasury Department.
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The Yale Budget Lab estimates that tariffs could raise around $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years, while the Congressional Budget Office predicts these could raise $3.3 trillion in revenue between 2025 and 2035.
Trump has said that his tariffs have already raised “trillions” in revenue, appearing to conflate sweeping investments that global partners have poured into the U.S. with direct tariff revenue.