President Trump has suggested a new idea. He wants to give most Americans a payment of two thousand dollars. He calls these payments tariff dividends. A new budget report says this plan could become extremely expensive.
Trump spoke about it in the Oval Office. He told reporters that the government wants to start sending these payments by the middle of twenty twenty six. That timing would be right before the midterm elections. He also said the exact timeline may depend on Congress because new laws might be needed to approve the payments.
Trump said that the payments would go to people with low or middle incomes. He said they would be worth thousands of dollars. He also said the country is collecting massive amounts of money from tariffs and that the government will use this money to pay the dividends.
A report from a well known budget group looked at the plan. The group is called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Their study says these payments would cost about six hundred billion dollars every year. They based this number on how the covid stimulus checks worked. Those payments went to most adults and children, except for people with very high incomes.
The study also looked at how much money the current tariffs are actually bringing in. So far this year the government has collected around one hundred billion dollars from tariffs. Some of these tariffs were ruled illegal by lower courts and are now waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court.
In total, the Trump administration’s full list of tariffs could bring in about three hundred billion dollars a year. But the amount that is legally solid and not affected by the court cases is much smaller. It is a little under one hundred billion dollars a year. That means the payments would cost far more than the money coming in.
It is still not clear how often Trump wants to send these two thousand dollar payments. He only said at least two thousand dollars per person. He did not say if that number could rise or if the payments would come once a year or less often.
The budget group also studied what would happen if these payments were made every year. They said it would increase the national deficit by six trillion dollars over ten years. That is twice as much as the tariffs are expected to raise over the same time.
They also explained how a revenue neutral version might work. If the government wanted to pay these dividends only with tariff money, then the payments could only happen every other year. That schedule would start in twenty twenty seven. If the courts cancel many of the tariffs, then the money would be even lower. In that case it would take about seven years to save enough for the next round of payments.
The group also warned about one more thing. If the tariff money is used for payments, then it cannot be used for reducing the national debt or covering the cost of Trump’s major spending bill.
The study makes one thing clear. The idea of two thousand dollar payments sounds simple, but the real cost could be much larger than many people expect.