"President Trump's recent proposal to pay Americans "at least $2,000 a person" from new tariff revenue-a policy he calls "tariff dividends"-is facing sharp criticism from a budget watchdog, who calculates that the plan will actually lose twice as much money for the country as the tariffs are generating. Writing in a weekend post on Truth Social, Trump argued that tariff revenues could be redistributed directly to individuals in the form of annual payments, with "high income people" excluded from the payouts."
"But the numbers reveal a steep fiscal challenge. The CRFB estimates that distributing just a single round of $2,000 payments to Americans-calculated to match the COVID payments, which included both adults and children-would cost the federal government around $600 billion per year. By contrast, the tariffs that Trump has championed have raised about $100 billion to date and, even accounting for pending legal cases, are only projected to raise about $300 billion annually going forward."
President Trump proposed paying Americans at least $2,000 per person funded by new tariff revenue, excluding high-income individuals. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates a single round of $2,000 payments would cost roughly $600 billion annually. Tariffs raised about $100 billion to date and are projected to raise about $300 billion per year going forward. Annual dividend payments would increase deficits by an estimated $6 trillion over ten years, approximately twice the revenue expected from the tariffs. Revenue-neutral payments could only be made about every other year, beginning in early 2027.
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