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

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!