Trump Promises $2,000 Tariff Dividend to Americans

The post comes after the Supreme Court questioned the legality of his use of emergency powers to impose sweeping new tariffs on nearly every country on Earth.

The US collected about $151 billion from import duties between April and October, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expected the US to collect $500 billion or more in tariff revenue per year.

For context, a pandemic-era proposal to send $2,000 checks to families was estimated to cost some $464 billion, according to the CRFB.

It’s not clear whether Trump’s tariff dividend would use the same parameters as the COVID-19 relief measures did.

Trump has flirted with the idea of tariff dividends in the past, but his recent musing comes in the wake of a Democratic sweep in blue state elections last Tuesday in which affordability issues loomed large.

During oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s monumental tariff case last Wednesday, which Bessent attended in person, conservative justices hammered a lawyer for the Trump administration, raising concerns that the high court may nix Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” and “trafficking” tariffs.

At issue specifically were the tariffs Trump imposed via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which accounted for about $90 billion of the roughly $151 billion in revenue from tariffs during fiscal year 2025, according to data from US Customs and Border Patrol as of Sept. 23.

There are other powers Trump’s team could potentially attempt to tap, such as Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, for his “trafficking” and “reciprocal” tariffs if the Supreme Court shuts down his use of IEEPA. But those other avenues are much messier and could also get slapped down by the courts.

Beyond the economic impacts, Trump has used IEEPA tariffs for negotiations with other countries, including in his efforts to end foreign wars.

Trump has other tariffs in place, such as ones targeting steel, aluminum, automobiles and more that are not implicated in the case before the Supreme Court.