US president Donald Trump on Sunday floated a fresh plan to give most Americans $2,000 each, funded by tariff revenues collected by his administration.
He revived the idea on his Truth Social platform as he tried to build public support around his controversial tariff strategy.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote. He also called opponents of tariffs “FOOLS!” in the same post.
Trump cannot move forward with the plan without approval from Congress.
Earlier this year, Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill that offered $600 in tariff rebates for most Americans and their dependent children.
Hawley said, “Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of [Joe] Biden [White House] policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods.” He added that his proposal would “allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country”.
The administration has focused on using tariff funds to reduce the national debt, which stands at $38.12tn. US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in August that the administration would use tariff collections to start paying down the federal debt rather than issue rebate checks.
The treasury department reported $195bn in customs duties collected during the first three quarters of the year. Analysts say Trump’s proposed payments could exceed that amount. Erica York, vice-president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, wrote, “If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion. If kids qualify, that grows.” She also said, “The math gets worse accounting for the full budgetary impact of tariffs. Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.”
John Arnold, co-chair of Arnold Ventures, estimated that the dividend payments could reach as high as $513bn.
Consumers faced an average effective tariff rate of nearly 18 percent in October, the highest since 1934, according to the Yale Budget Lab. After Trump introduced sweeping tariffs on global trading partners in April, companies increased prices and passed some of those costs on to consumers.
Trump has raised the idea of stimulus checks tied to tariff revenue several times. In October, he said he was looking at checks worth between $1,000 and $2,000. In July, he again discussed tariff rebate checks.
In February, Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who at the time advised the White House, explored a plan for a $5,000 “dividend” check based on savings created by the department of government efficiency, known as Doge. That idea collapsed when the national deficit increased and the administration overstated how much it saved through Doge.
The US supreme court heard arguments on Wednesday on Trump’s sweeping global tariffs and signaled doubts about their legality.