nother day, another Donald Trump happening that’s sparked debate.
The president has made all manner of lofty promises over the past year, both prior to and since his victory in the presidential election. We’re still waiting on the release of the Epstein files, for example, while the Russia-Ukraine war continues to rage despite Trump’s assertion that he would end it before he even arrived at the Oval Office to begin his second term.
To put it mildly, one should perhaps not believe everything that Trump pledges to make true. Which is why a moment’s pause is needed before US citizens get excited about receiving a $2,000 dividend to be distributed from what Trump claimed was tariff revenue.
Naturally, that’s easier said than done. Who doesn’t want to get $2,000 in their bank account for doing nothing? Particularly when they’ve been promised it by the country’s leader.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
In the post in question, he neglected to elaborate on a potential timeline, exactly who would be eligible for the dividend, and who wouldn’t be eligible.
In typically bombastic fashion, Trump painted a hyperbolic picture of his tariff program, declaring it an astonishing success.
“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,” Trump wrote.
“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.”
Perhaps predictably, doubts were cast on Trump’s plan to hand out $2000 to everyone. The Guardian delved a little deeper into the potential problems with such a huge undertaking on the government’s part, with analysts pointing out that there are two major hurdles.
The first is cost. Such a payment could cost between $300 billion and $513 billion, depending on whether children count and which adults are eligible.
Economist Erica York wrote: “If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion. … Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.”
The second issue is the legal challenges associated with the tariffs themselves, which is where any and all money for dividends would com from.
Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in cases challenging the president’s use of emergency‐powers law to implement the tariffs. Three lower courts already ruled the approach illegal, and if the tariffs collapse in court, any planned or perceived system resulting in a payout would disappear.
To sum it up, Trump might promise unexpected, too-good-to-be-true dividends, but until he makes clear who’s eligible and when the payout might be made, and until he can categorically clarify the future of his tariff model, the whole thing seems… optimistic, shall we say.
In any case, probably a good idea that you don’t spend the $2,000 before it actually lands in your account.
Do you think Donald Trump can/will make good on his promise for sweeping dividends? Let us know in the comments
This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump promised Americans $2,000 each from the “trillions of dollars” in tariff revenue he said his administration has collected.
During his second term, Trump has imposed tariffs broadly on countries and on specific goods such as drugs, steel and cars.
“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!,” Trump said in a Nov. 9 Truth Social post. “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.”
How seriously should people take his pledge? Experts urged caution.
Tariffs are projected to generate well below “trillions” a year, making it harder to pay each person $2,000. And the administration already said it would use the tariff revenue to either pay for existing tax cuts or to reduce the federal debt.
READ MORE: 5 things to know about tariffs and how they work
Trump’s post came days after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about the legality of his tariff policy. The justices are weighing whether Trump has the power to unilaterally impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. If the justices rule against Trump, much of the expected future tariff revenue would not materialize.
The administration has published no plans for the tariff dividends, and in a Nov. 9 ABC News interview, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he hadn’t spoken to Trump about giving Americans a dividend payment.
Details about a potential payment have been limited to Truth Social posts.
Trump said “everyone” excluding “high income people” would get the money, but didn’t explain who qualifies as “high income.” He also didn’t say whether children would receive the payment.
WATCH: What Trump’s tariffs mean for the everyday products we rely on
In a Nov. 10 Truth Social post, Trump said his administration would first pay $2,000 to “low and middle income USA Citizens,” and then use the remaining tariff revenues to “substantially pay down national debt.”
Trump hasn’t said what form the payments might take. Bessent said the dividend “could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways. 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.”
Analysts said it’s a stretch to rebrand an already promised tax cut as a new dividend.
Trump has previously discussed paying Americans with tariff revenue.
WATCH: Trump’s tariffs face Supreme Court test as businesses challenge his power to impose them
“We have so much money coming in, we’re thinking about a little rebate but the big thing we want to do is pay down debt,” he told reporters July 25. “We’re thinking about a rebate.”
Days later, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation that would give $600 tariff rebate checks to each American adult and child. Hawley’s bill has not advanced.
Trump made the imposition of tariffs one of his signature 2024 campaign promises. Since taking office in January, he has enacted tariffs on a scale not seen in the U.S. in almost a century; the current overall average tariff rate is 18%, the highest since 1934, according to Yale Budget Lab.
Through the end of October, the federal government collected $309.2 billion in tariff revenue, compared with $165.4 billion through the same point in 2024, an increase of $143.8 billion.
Erica York, the Tax Foundation’s vice president of federal tax policy, estimated in a Nov. 9 X post that a $2,000 tariff dividend for each person earning under $100,000 would equal 150 million adult recipients. That would cost nearly $300 billion, York calculated, or more if children qualified. That’s more than the tariffs have raised so far, she said.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that Trump’s proposal could cost $600 billion, depending on how it is structured.
The Trump administration already promised to use tariff revenue for other purposes, including reducing the country’s deficit and offsetting the cost of the GOP tax and spending bill Trump signed into law in July.
As Trump announced new tariffs April 2, he said he would “use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”
Bessent has made the same promise, falsely saying in July that tariffs were “going to pay off our deficit.”
Bessent said in August that he and Trump were “laser focused on paying down the debt.”
WATCH: 4 Republicans join Senate Democrats in passing rebuke to Trump’s global tariffs
“I think we’re going to bring down the deficit-to-GDP,” Bessent said in an Aug. 19 CNBC interview. “We’ll start paying down debt and then at a point that can be used as an offset to the American people.”
Tariffs are already costing Americans money, analysts say. Independent estimates range from about $1,600 to $2,600 a year per household. Given the similarity of these amounts to Trump’s proposed dividend, York said it would be more efficient to remove the tariffs.
Joseph Rosenberg, Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center senior fellow, said a $2,000 dividend in the form of a check would require congressional approval — and lawmakers have already declined to act on that idea once.
When members of Congress approved the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, “They had the ability to include a tariff dividend, but they didn’t,” Rosenberg said.