President Donald Trump has promised to deliver $2,000 tariff rebate checks next year, raising hopes of a lifeline for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet.
“We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money. We’re going to be issuing dividends…probably the middle of next year, a little bit later than that, of thousands of dollars for individuals of moderate income, middle income,” Trump said Monday.
Although Trump has suggested these checks are essentially a done deal, the reality is there are major, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles standing in the way.
Experts tell CNN it is improbable the federal government will send out $2,000 checks next year – unless it looks like the US economy needs to be rescued from an imminent recession.
“It’s highly unlikely there is some sort of stimulus check sent out next year. I would be pretty shocked,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, told CNN in a phone interview.
Bettors on prediction platform Polymarket seem to agree. They place just an 11% chance that Trump creates a tariff dividend by March 31.
The math doesn’t math
Perhaps the biggest obstacle is that the numbers don’t add up.
Tariffs are undoubtedly generating gobs of money for the federal government.
Trump’s new tariffs are projected to raise $158.4 billion in total revenue in 2025, and another $207.5 billion in 2026, according to estimates from the Tax Foundation.
It’s hard to say exactly how much tariff dividend checks will cost because virtually no details have been released.
Still, the Tax Foundation modeled three designs for tariff dividends – and all of them would cost more than the new tariffs are projected to bring in this year.
For instance, if the checks went out only to tax filers and spouses, and had a hard cut off at $100,000 in individual income, they would still cost $279.8 billion, according to the analysis. That’s $121 billion more than projected new tariff revenue this year.
At the high end of the scenarios analyzed, tariff dividends could go out to tax filers and non-filers as well as spouses and dependents. That would cost up to $606.8 billion – or nearly double the combined 2025 and 2026 projected new tariff revenue.
That’s a problem because the Trump administration has already held up tariff revenue as a way to offset the cost of the sweeping tax and spending package Trump signed into law earlier this year.
“This is like the magic money tree. You just go to it anytime you need money. Of course, that’s not reality,” said Lincicome.
The votes may not be there
Another major problem is Congress would need to sign off on dividend checks – and it’s far from clear there are the votes for that.
