Study shows Trump checks would cost $600B
By: Joey Garrison
USA Today
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's proposal to send Americans $2,000 rebate checks from money collected through his tariffs is projected to cost $600 billion a year - about double what the United States is expected to generate from the new import duties.
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The committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan nonprofit the studies fiscal policy, release the projections on November 10 [2025] after trump over the weekend [11/08-09/2025] pitched his rebate idea on social media. The president touted "taking in Trillions of Dollars" and said, "A dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people) will be paid to everyone."
..... Trump then brought up his idea during November 10 [2025] remarks to reporters in the Oval Office. "We're going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower-income people - about $2,000," he said. "And we'll use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt. We're going to be lowering our debt, which is a national security thing."
..... While Trump did not specify income requirements for recipients, the center;s analysis assumes the checks would be designed similar to the stimulus payments distributed directly to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The checks from the 2020 CARES act in Trump's first term included payments for adults and additional money per child for individual taxpayers earning up to $75,000, or $150,000 for joint income tax filers.
..... Under the same criteria, a single round of Trump's tariff dividend checks would cost about $600 billion. However, the new tariffs imposed in 2025 are projected to germinate only about $300 billion a year. As of the end of October, [2025] Trump's new tariffs had generated an additional $100 billion in tax revenue.
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Over a 10-year period, the dividends would increase deficit by $6 trillion if rebate checks were distributed annually according to the CRFB's analysis.
..... The president's pitch came as the Supreme Court is considering whether to rule against his use of emergency powers as legal justification to issue sweeping tariffs on imports from across the world.
..... At November 5 [2025] oral arguments, in a legal challenge brought by businesses, all three of the court's liberal justices expressed clear resistance to upholding Trump's power to impose emergency tariffs. And a least three of the court's six conservative members - Che if Justice John Roberts and and Justice's Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett - sounded skeptical of the Trump administration's arguments.
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Nevertheless, Trump expressed optimism about the fate of his tariffs. "Nobody thinks it;s going to be reversed. I think we had a very good court case," he aid on November 10. [2025]
..... If the court rules Trump's tariffs are illegal, the administration could be required to return the revenue it collected, which would spoil any hopes that the dividend checks might come to fruition. Any proposal for rebate checks from tariff revenue would require approval from Congress, which holds purse power when it comes to spending public dollars.
..... Contributing: Kinsey Crowley, USA Today