Trump Promises $2,000 Tariff Dividend to Americans

President Donald Trump promised a $2,000 payment for every American as a tariff “dividend,” in a post Sunday morning.

The post comes after the Supreme Court questioned the legality of his use of emergency powers to impose sweeping new tariffs on nearly every country on Earth.

“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” read Trump’s post on Truth Social.

Trump provided no details on who exactly would be eligible, or when the payments might go out.

But Bessent explained to ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the tariff dividends might not be direct payments.

“The $2,000 divided could come in lots of forms,” Bessent said. “It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing.”

The president added that the tariffs have brought in “trillions of dollars” and that 401(k) accounts are the “Highest EVER”. He also claimed there was “No Inflation” from the duties.

“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” he wrote.

The US collected about $151 billion from import duties between April and October, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expected the US to collect $500 billion or more in tariff revenue per year.

For context, a pandemic-era proposal to send $2,000 checks to families was estimated to cost some $464 billion, according to the CRFB.

It’s not clear whether Trump’s tariff dividend would use the same parameters as the COVID-19 relief measures did.

Trump has flirted with the idea of tariff dividends in the past, but his recent musing comes in the wake of a Democratic sweep in blue state elections last Tuesday in which affordability issues loomed large.

GOP lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have largely shown little interest in green-lighting direct payments to Americans.

“It’ll never pass,” Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), whom Vice President JD Vance backed in a primary contest last year, bluntly told reporters in July, according to Business Insider. “We have a $37 trillion debt.”

During oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s monumental tariff case last Wednesday, which Bessent attended in person, conservative justices hammered a lawyer for the Trump administration, raising concerns that the high court may nix Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” and “trafficking” tariffs.

At issue specifically were the tariffs Trump imposed via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which accounted for about $90 billion of the roughly $151 billion in revenue from tariffs during fiscal year 2025, according to data from US Customs and Border Patrol as of Sept. 23.

There are other powers Trump’s team could potentially attempt to tap, such as Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, for his “trafficking” and “reciprocal” tariffs if the Supreme Court shuts down his use of IEEPA. But those other avenues are much messier and could also get slapped down by the courts.

Additionally, should Trump lose the tariff case, his administration could be forced to dole out refunds for the tariffs collected.

Beyond the economic impacts, Trump has used IEEPA tariffs for negotiations with other countries, including in his efforts to end foreign wars.

A decision in the tariff case is expected to be handed down before the end of next June.

Trump has other tariffs in place, such as ones targeting steel, aluminum, automobiles and more that are not implicated in the case before the Supreme Court.