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Tag: Stimulus Checks

  • Trump Really Wants to Mail Out $2K Checks With His Signature

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    More money for you! Signed, DJT.
    Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, the one policy Donald Trump consistently favored was the mailing of “stimulus checks” (technically, economic-impact payments) to individual taxpayers, bearing his signature, as though this federal-government largesse was a gift from the president himself. Indeed, he pitched a temper tantrum not long before his first term ended because the stimulus checks Congress authorized him to send out were $600, while he much preferred $2,000. Such direct payments to the whole country were later, of course, denounced by many conservatives as inflationary, mostly when they were continued by a Democratic president and Congress in 2021 (Joe Biden, by the way, didn’t sign those checks, though he later joked that maybe he should have).

    Trump’s desire for a $2,000 check he could take credit for survived his four years out of power. Early this year, he embraced an incredibly half-baked idea to give taxpayers a $5,000 “DOGE Dividend,” to reflect the vast savings that Elon Musk was then claiming he was going to generate from chainsawing federal agencies. Unfortunately, DOGE wasn’t saving much of anything at all, so people waiting for their $5,000 checks were disappointed.

    The 47th president didn’t give up, though; he keeps looking for a big, fat cookie jar full of money he can gift to the great unwashed, particularly now that they are so stubbornly finding life in the economic paradise of Trump 2.0 less than affordable. His latest big idea is a “tariff dividend,” as broadcast by a Truth Social post on November 9, shortly after affordability-obsessed voters gave his party a spanking:

    We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone

    Much like the DOGE Dividend idea, the tariff dividend lollipop has some math problems, as was pointed out by those spoilsports at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

    Assuming these dividends are designed like the COVID-era Economic Impact Payments, which went to both adults and children, we estimate each round of payments would cost about $600 billion. In comparison, President Trump’s new tariffs currently in effect have raised approximately $100 billion thus far and — including those tariffs that have been ruled illegal pending a Supreme Court appeal — are projected to raise about $300 billion per year.

    That’s a good point about Trump counting — or in this case, vastly overcounting — his chickens before they hatch, given widespread expectations of an adverse judicial decision on the authority he cited for his tariffs. There are also reports that the administration plans to pursue major exemptions from the tariffs of food and other essentials in the very near term. On top of all that, the circular nature of this massive transfer of dollars is hard to ignore. If the dividends are supposed to offset the cost to consumers of tariffs (Trump doesn’t admit that exists, but anyone with basic economics credentials does), why not refrain from imposing those tariffs in the first place? It’s just a vast money-go-round.

    The odds are vanishingly low that the “tariff dividends” are happening, of course. They would require congressional approval, including 60 votes in the Senate, and Democrats aren’t going to help Trump out of his self-imposed affordability problems. There’s also a chance that the administration is just going to rebrand tax proposals it has already made, some of which have already been enacted, hints Treasury secretary Scott Bessent:

    “I haven’t spoken to the president about this yet, but the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms,” adding, “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 the president’s dreams of cash-on-the-barrel vote buying may have to be watered down and pushed into the future a bit. It’s very clear he won’t give up on the best of all economic messages: Here’s more money for you, courtesy of Donald J. Trump. Thank you for your attention to this matter!


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Donald Trump stimulus check update: White House “committed” on $2K payments

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    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.

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