President Donald Trump again suggested using tariff revenue to provide Americans with a “dividend,” though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it could come “in lots of forms.”
On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that opponents of his tariffs are “fools,” adding that the government is taking in trillions of dollars that will go toward paying down U.S. debt.
“Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place,” he wrote. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Tariffs are expected to generate $300 billion-$400 billion annually. And over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated they could produce $3.3 trillion in revenue.
With such high hopes for a massive windfall, Trump has floated a tariff-related payment multiple times in the past. But his latest proposal came just days after his administration told the Supreme Court that tariffs are not meant to generate revenue.
On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Bessent said he’s not worried that Trump’s public statements are undercutting his arguments at the high court, which is considering a challenge to his global tariffs enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The Treasury chief said tariffs are meant to rebalance trade, with revenue eventually shifting to domestic taxes as more high-paid manufacturing jobs come back to the U.S.
He added that he hadn’t yet talked to Trump about the $2,000 dividend idea, which would require Congress to pass legislation.
But Bessent also pointed to tax provisions that have already been signed into law in his tax-and-spending bill as sources of the dividend.
“The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways,” he explained. “You know, it could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions that, you know, are being financed in the tax bill.”
So Americans may not get a check in the mail. But Bessent’s suggestion that the dividend may not involve fresh allocations would also help sidestep difficult budget math.
So much tariff revenue has been coming in that it’s helped keep budget deficits from getting much worse. But that assumes the revenue actually goes toward funding the federal government. Drawing on that money to instead pay for dividends would require the government to issue more debt.
Trump’s social media post didn’t include additional details on the dividend. But Erica York, a tax policy expert at the Tax Foundation, attempted some back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Assuming the cutoff for “high income” Americans is $100,000, then about 150 million adults would qualify for the dividend, putting the cost at nearly $300 billion, she posted on X, adding that the cost grows if children are also eligible.
“The math gets worse accounting for the full budgetary impact of tariffs: a dollar of tariff revenue offsets about 24 cents of income and payroll tax revenue,” York said. “Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.”
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