United States President Donald Trump is committed to providing Americans with $2,000 cheques using money that has come into government coffers from Trump’s tariffs.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump’s staff is exploring how to go about making the plan a reality.
The president proposed the idea on his Truth Social media platform on Sunday, five days after his Republican Party lost elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because of voter discontent with his economic stewardship — specifically, the high cost of living.
A new AP-NORC poll finds that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 33 percent approve.
The tariffs are bringing in so much money, the president posted, that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.’’
“Trump has taken to his favorite policymaking forum, Truth Social, to make yet another guarantee that Americans are going to receive dividend [cheques] from the revenues collected by tariffs,” Alex Jacquez, who served on the National Economic Council under former US President Joe Biden, said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.
Budget experts have scoffed at Trump’s tariff dividend plan, which conjured memories of the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dividend cheques financed by billionaire Elon Musk’s federal budget cuts.
“The numbers just don’t check out,″ Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, told the Associated Press.
The tariffs are certainly raising money — $195bn in the budget year that ended September 30, up 153 percent from $77bn in fiscal 2024. But they still account for less than four percent of federal revenue, and have done little to dent the federal budget deficit, a staggering $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025.
Budget wonks say Trump’s dividend math doesn’t work.
John Ricco, an analyst with the Budget Lab at Yale University, reckons that Trump’s tariffs will bring in $200bn to $300bn a year in revenue. But a $2,000 dividend — if it went to all Americans, including children — would cost $600bn. “It’s clear that the revenue coming in would not be adequate,” Ricco said.
Source: aljazeera