Validation of Trump’s promise to give Americans $2,000 in tariff profits

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 raised.

During his second term, Trump imposed broad tariffs on countries and on specific goods such as medicine, steel, and cars.

Read more: What do experts think about Trump’s $1,000 ‘accounts’ for babies?

“People who oppose tariffs are idiots!” Trump said in a November 9 Truth Social post. “We are receiving trillions of dollars and will soon begin paying off our enormous debt, $37 trillion. Record investment in the USA, factories and mills are going up everywhere. Dividends of at least $2,000 per person (not including high-income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

How seriously should people take his pledge? Experts urged caution.

The tariffs are expected to generate far less than “trillions” annually, making it difficult to pay $2,000 per person. The administration has already said it will use 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 US Supreme Court heard arguments about the legality of his tariff policy. The justices are examining whether Trump has the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. If the justices rule against Trump, much of the expected future tariff revenue will not be realized.

What Trump proposed, and who would qualify

The administration has not released any plans to distribute tariff dividends, and in an ABC News interview on November 9, Treasury Secretary Scott Besent said he had not spoken to Trump about giving Americans dividends.

Details regarding the potential payment were limited to Truth Social posts.

Trump said “everyone” except “high-income people” would get the money, but he did not clarify who qualifies as “high-income people.” He also did not say whether the children would receive the amount or not.

He watches: What do Trump’s tariffs mean for the everyday products we depend on?

In a post on Truth Social on November 10, Trump said his administration would first pay $2,000 to “low- and middle-income US citizens,” and then use the remaining tariff proceeds to “significantly pay down the national debt.”

Trump did not say what form the payments might take. Dividends “can come in many forms, in many ways,” Picent said. “You know, it could be just the tax cuts that we’re seeing on the president’s agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, auto loan deduction. So, you know, those are big discounts.”

Analysts said it would be a stretch to rebrand an already promised tax cut as a new dividend.

Trump has previously discussed paying tariff revenues to Americans.

He watches: Trump’s tariffs face a test before the Supreme Court as companies challenge his authority to impose them

“We have a lot of money coming in, and we’re thinking about a little discount but the big thing we want to do is pay down the debt,” he told reporters on July 25. “We’re thinking of a discount.”

Days later, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation that would give $600 duty rebate checks to every American adult and child. Hawley’s bill did not advance.

Tariff revenues collected against the cost of paying “dividends”.

Trump has made tariffs one of his 2024 campaign promises. Since taking office in January, he has imposed tariffs on a scale not seen in the United States in nearly a century; The current average tariff rate is 18%, the highest since 1934, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

As of the end of October, the federal government had collected $309.2 billion in tariff revenues, compared to $165.4 billion through the same period in 2024, an increase of $143.8 billion.

Erica York, the Tax Foundation’s vice president for federal tax policy, estimated in a Nov. 9 post that a $2,000 tariff dividend for each person earning less than $100,000 would equate to 150 million adult beneficiaries. This would cost nearly $300 billion, York calculates, or more if children qualify. This is more than the tariffs that have been raised so far, she said.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget expects Trump’s proposal to cost $600 billion, depending on how it is structured.

The administration has previously detailed other uses of tariff revenue

The Trump administration has already promised to use tariff revenue for other purposes, including reducing the nation’s deficit and offsetting the cost of the GOP tax and spending bill that Trump signed into law in July.

When Trump announced new tariffs on April 2, he said he would “use trillions and trillions of dollars to cut our taxes and pay down our national debt.”

Besant made the same promise, falsely saying in July that tariffs would “close our deficit.”

Pisant said in August that he and Trump were “focused on paying down the debt.”

He watches: 4 Republicans join Senate Democrats in passing a rebuke to Trump’s global tariffs

“I think we will get the deficit to GDP down,” Besant said in an August 19 interview with CNBC. “We will start paying off the debt and then at a point it can be used as compensation to the American people.”

The current cost of tariffs to Americans

Analysts say the tariffs are already costing Americans money. Independent estimates range from about $1,600 to $2,600 per year per household. Given the similarity of these amounts to Trump’s proposed dividends, York said it would be more efficient to remove the tariffs.

Distributing a $2,000 dividend in the form of a check would require congressional approval — and lawmakers have already refused to act on that idea once, said Joseph Rosenberg, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Urban Institute.

When lawmakers approved the big, beautiful bill, “they had the ability to include tariff profits, but they didn’t,” Rosenberg said.