Trump is considering giving Americans $2,000 in tax benefits. The plan will likely need congressional approval to take effect.
Donald Trump on Sunday considered giving most Americans $2,000 in tariff proceeds collected by the presidential administration. According to The Guardian, this is clearly an attempt to gain public support on this issue.
“Dividends of at least $2,000 per person (excluding high earners!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth on Sunday.
The post also attacked tariff opponents: “STOP!”
For such a plan to take effect, approval from Parliament may be needed, The Guardian writes. Earlier this year, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill that would provide $600 tariff relief to nearly all Americans and their dependent children.
“Americans deserve a tax break after four years of Joe Biden policies that have devastated families' savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said at the time.
He said the legislation “will allow hardworking Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump's tariffs are returning to this country.”
However, in August, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration's top priority remains reducing the national debt, currently at $38.12 trillion, using tariff funding. He said the money would be used primarily to pay down federal debt, not to provide rebate checks to Americans.
According to a September Treasury report, $195 billion in customs duties were collected in the first three quarters of this year.
Although it seems like the cost of issuing a $2,000 check could easily exceed the actual amount collected from the tariffs, The Guardian writes. These payments are estimated to cost nearly double the amount reported to have been received to date.
“If the cap were $100,000, 150 million adults would qualify, costing about $300 billion,” Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, wrote on social media. “If children are qualified, it will grow.” “The calculations are made even worse by the full financial impact of the tariffs,” York added. “Taking that into account, the tariffs increased net benefits by $90 billion compared to Trump's proposed $300 billion rebate.”
John Arnold, co-chairman of Arnold Ventures, estimates the cost of paying dividends could reach $513 billion.
As of October, the average effective tax rate for consumers was estimated to be nearly 18%, the highest since 1934. Since the president imposed blanket tariffs on global trading partners in April, companies have passed on some of those costs to consumers.
This is not the first time Trump has come up with the idea of issuing stimulus checks to Americans based on his tariff revenue, The Guardian recalls. In October, he said he was considering giving Americans checks worth $1,000 to $2,000 from the proceeds. In July, the president again suggested that the government consider the possibility of checking tariff discounts.
In February, he and tech mogul Elon Musk, who was still advising the White House at the time, said they were considering the idea of paying a $5,000 “dividend” based on savings from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). These payments were never made because the government's deficit actually increased in this department and the amount of cuts from federal spending was greatly exaggerated.
The US Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on Trump's massive global tariffs and appeared skeptical about their legality.
