Donald Trump has unveiled how he intends to afford to give most Americans on low to medium incomes a $2,000 tariff ‘dividend’ check.
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, giving out the $2,000 payment to most Americans could cost as much as $600 billion in total, more than double the anticipated revenue from the tariffs that were imposed back in April.
So far, the steep tariffs have raked in around $90 billion from many key countries around the world, with a baseline tariff of around 10 percent being imposed on most foreign nations.
Yet this amount is still just a fraction of the funds needed to make his promise of a check a reality, with Trump promising that taxpayer funds would not be used to meet the shortfall.
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Instead, he continued to stand by his belief that tariffs would pay for the checks, and on Monday (November 24), the president shared an update about how he is confident the tariffs will soon skyrocket and bridge the funding gap.
Trump announced the tariffs back in April (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Posting on Truth Social, he said that the ‘full benefit of the Tariffs had not yet been calculated’.
Many businesses rushed to stockpile inventory earlier this year before tariff deadlines came into force, a move that saw them temporarily dodge paying hefty import fees.
However, warehouses are now beginning to run out of this backstock, with the president predicting that it means companies will now be forced to cough up for the enhanced import fees in full.
With tariffs set to be paid on everything they apply to, without avoidance, Trump predicts that the amount payable to the US will ‘skyrocket over and above the already historic levels of dollars received’.
While many people are looking forward to a potential $2,000 windfall, which is slated to be sometime before the 2026 midterms, Republican lawmakers have raised concerns that Trump’s tariff dividends could spell disaster for the economy.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Trump signed off on a Covid-19 stimulus payment to help Americans through the crisis, a move which was largely welcomed by citizens in need.
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However, when Joe Biden took office in 2021, Democrats argued for a raft of further stimulus checks, something which economists believe may have helped to spike inflation.
Yet as the cost of living rose, Biden’s approval rating plummeted, with experts fearing a similar fate could befall Trump if he follows through with his current plan.
According to the Consumer Price Index, inflation has been rising since January, with prices even hitting three percent in September.
With the soaring costs showing no sign of slowing down, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has urged Americans to save the checks instead of spending them in a bid to avoid spiking it any further.
“Maybe we could persuade Americans to save that, because one of the things that’s going to happen next year is the Trump account[s],” he told Fox News.
