President Donald Trump is “committed” to sending Americans $2,000 dividend checks, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Leavitt said officials are exploring ways to implement a plan to distribute money from tariff revenue. She did not provide further details about the plan.
A White House official told Newsweek: “President Trump’s tariffs are resetting global commerce, securing manufacturing investments, and safeguarding our national and economic security – and they’re also raising billions in revenue for the federal government. The Administration is committed to putting this money to good use for the American people. Given we have not yet revealed any specifics here, back-of-the-envelope analyses about the dividends are baseless speculation.”
Why It Matters
Trump has faced a backlash over his handling of the economy since his return to the White House, and inflation and economic uncertainty are rife. Stimulus checks could prove particularly popular among lower-income voters, but some policy experts have raised concerns about the feasibility of the proposal.
What To Know
Leavitt told reporters: “The president made it clear he wants to make it happen. So his team of economic advisers are looking into it.”
It comes after Trump posted on Truth Social about the plan, saying: “We’re going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower-income people—about $2,000.”
He also spoke about it at the Oval Office on Monday and said it would apply to “middle-income people and lower-income people,” though he did not specify what that income threshold would be.
On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared to express doubts about the plan when he told ABC News’ This Week that a tariff dividend could come “in lots of forms” and that Trump could have been referring to tax savings from his One Big Beautiful Bill legislation.
“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 on auto loans. Those are substantial deductions that are being financed in the tax bill,” Bessent said.
An analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimated the cost of such rebate checks at $600 billion annually, which is double the total annual revenue projected from new tariffs in 2025. The CRFB warned that this could add $6 trillion to the national deficit over a decade if continued annually.
According to the Treasury Department’s latest monthly statement, the U.S. has raised around $195 billion in customs duties in Fiscal Year 2025.
“Like so many Trump statements, the promise of $2,000 tariff rebate checks was so broadly phrased as to be hard to assess,” Calvin Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University, told Newsweek. “He certainly could not have meant a $2,000 check to every American, even every American adult or every taxpayer, as these would cost several times what the tariffs have brought in. Expect a much scaled-down version of the initial broad promise.”
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social: “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. 401k’s are Highest EVER,” the president wrote. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, wrote on X: “The President just proposed a $2,000 tariff ‘dividend’ for each person, excluding high-income earners. If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion. If kids qualify, that grows. Only problem, new tariffs have raised $120 billion so far.”
What Happens Next
For the plan to proceed, it would need to be approved by Congress. Meanwhile, the legality of Trump’s tariff policies will be decided by the Supreme Court. If they rule against the tariffs, this would further undermine Trump’s ability to issue stimulus checks.
