In a Truth Social post on Sunday, President Donald Trump said that Americans will be paid a $2,000 dividend funded by the revenue generated from his tariff policy.
“A dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump said.
When speaking with ABC News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had not spoken with Trump about said dividends. He did, however, elaborate on what the President may have in mind.
“The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms,” said Bessent. “You know, it could be just the tax decrease that we are seeing on the president’s agenda – you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, deductibility of auto loans.”
Trump also said that the U.S. would soon start “paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT.” According to the Treasury Department, the United States currently has a national debt of over $38 trillion.
Despite being vocal, particularly in the leadup to his first presidential term, about the need to reduce the national debt, Trump’s policies are widely considered to have drastically increased it. For example, the Congressional Budget Office reported that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will add $3.4 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.
In a 2016 interview, Trump estimated that it would take a period of eight years to get rid of the national debt. At that time, the debt was $19 trillion, half of what it is now.
U.S. tariff revenues were $28 billion in June and $29 billion in July. If tariff revenues were to stay that high for an extended period of time and the administration used all of that revenue to pay off the national debt, it would take over 100 years before it was fully paid off. If the government wants to make a serious dent in the national debt, it will have to find larger sources of revenue.
