House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) did not specify if Congress will vote on President Donald Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff rebates, suggesting an alternative option would be to lower the nation’s deficit.
Trump promised last week that everyone outside of “high-income” earners will receive “a dividend of at least $2,000 a person” from his tariffs, which were announced earlier this year. Scalise said there is a “robust debate” over what to do with the United States’s tariff revenue, adding that “a lot” of people don’t think it’ll be long-term as Trump is reaching new trade agreements.
“So one point of a lot of discussion was to use that tariff revenue to reduce the deficit, and I think everybody would agree reducing the deficit lowers interest rates, it lowers inflation. Taking all of that money that Washington borrows off the table and no longer borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars in this case would actually be good for the entire economy and put more money in the pockets of families who are struggling in terms of lower inflation and lower interest rates for people that want to go buy a home, buy a new home, first-time home buyers,” Scalise said on Fox News’s The Sunday Briefing.
“All of those things are things that we have been actively debating in Congress,” Scalise said.
Trump has also proposed sending Obamacare funding directly to consumers to purchase “better” healthcare, adding that it is “long past time to lower premiums, not enrich insurance companies.” Scalise said Congress will act on this “real soon” and that other efforts and ideas on healthcare affordability are being discussed “in the weeks ahead.”
WITH ‘TARIFF DIVIDEND’ AND 50-YEAR MORTGAGE SCHEMES, TRUMP FAILS BASIC ECONOMICS
The Trump administration is planning a new round of tariff exemptions to address food prices in a bid to promote affordability. In a statement provided to the Washington Examiner by the White House, spokesman Kush Desai highlighted a September executive order that laid out assorted natural resources and agricultural products not produced domestically that could be eligible to have tariffs lifted.
One issue that could inflate through Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff rebates is inflation. Jason Furman, the chairman of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told the Washington Examiner that when former President Joe Biden issued stimulus spending during the pandemic recovery, it contributed to higher inflation in the following years.