Tariff dividend checks discussed by President Trump at Cabinet meeting
President Donald Trump discusses tariff dividend checks at Cabinet meeting.
Fox – 5 DC
The $2,000 dividend check that President Donald Trump has been talking about for months seemed to be completely forgotten in a recent interview with The New York Times. It looks like the payment date has also changed.
President Trump has been promoting the idea of rebating dividends from tariff revenue since July. At the Dec. 2 Cabinet meeting, the president spoke again about the possibility of checks, saying, “Next year is expected to be the biggest tax refund season in history, and we’ve literally received trillions of dollars that we’re going to refund from tariffs.”
But on January 7, in a two-hour interview with four New York Times White House correspondents, President Trump asked, “Did I do that? When did I do that?” According to a transcript of the interview, reporter Katie Rogers asked when Americans could expect their promised $2,000 tariff dividend checks.
When Mr. Rogers responded, “Well, I mean you,” the president continued, “Yes, I’m thinking about it. Well, I paid $1,776 for the military,” he said, referring to the “Warrior Dividend” sent to military personnel last month.
Reporter Tyler Pager then returned to the question of when Americans would receive their checks. In response, President Trump said, “Well, we’re going to do that. The tariff money is very large. It’s coming in, so at some point we’ll be able to do $2,000. I think towards the end of the year.”
President Trump’s tariff dividend checks were scheduled to go into effect in mid-2026.
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on November 17 that the tariff dividend checks would be issued “probably in the middle of next year” and would amount to “a few thousand dollars to middle-income, middle-income individuals.”
On November 10, President Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the $2,000 payments would go to “low- and moderate-income Americans.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Trump was asked by reporter Zoran Canno-Youngs, “Don’t we need Congress? Don’t we need Congress’ cooperation?”
“No, we don’t think so,” President Trump said. “Information is coming in from other sources.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said in the past that legislation would be needed to return customs revenue. Another potential hurdle is that the Supreme Court is expected to rule as soon as this week on whether President Trump’s global import tariffs are illegal.
Some people oppose the proposed tariff dividend checks.
Some experts say the $2,000 checks aren’t the best use of tariff revenue. First of all, the revenue from tariffs falls short of what is needed for the proposed rebates, said Scott Linthicum, vice president for general economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
“Sending checks is an inefficient and distortive redistribution of wealth,” he told USA TODAY. “It would be far better to eliminate tariffs and let Americans keep their dollars in the first place.”
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that studies fiscal policy, estimates that the tariff rebate payments will cost $600 billion, while the revenue from tariffs will be about $300 billion a year.
“With the national debt rapidly approaching record highs and the annual budget deficit approaching $2 trillion a year, it is imperative that policymakers focus on actually reducing the deficit and putting the debt on a downward trajectory,” the CRFB said. “Additional tariff revenue should be used to reduce the deficit, as some administration officials have stated their intention, rather than passing that revenue on to taxpayers in the form of cash dividends.”
Mike Snyder is a national trends news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, and X, and email him at: mike snyder & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com.
