Study: Trump’s “Tariff Dividend Checks” Would Cost $450 Billion

Donald Trump recently promised he would be sending low and middle income Americans $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks financed by the Trump tariffs sometime in mid-2026.

However, the Yale Budget Lab reports that the checks could cost the federal government about twice as much as the total revenue that will be raised by the administration’s tariff hikes in 2026.

Trump’s promised $2,000 tariff checks would probably cost $450 billion, per a new analysis. At that price, the dividend would leave nothing for the president’s other promised uses of the money, like paying down debt and bailing out farmers. https://t.co/KGcsitfN5f

— Axios (@axios) November 18, 2025

Via Yale Budget Lab:

In this post, we assume the “tariff dividend” would take the form of a one-time refundable credit of $2,000 per person for tax units with 2025 Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) strictly below $100,000, with no adjustment for filing status and no limit on the number of eligible people in the household.

Under this interpretation, a married couple with two children and AGI of $95,000 would receive up to $8,000 (four eligible people at $2,000 each). A single filer with AGI of $99,000 would receive $2,000. But in both cases, an additional dollar of income that pushes taxable income above the $100,000 cutoff would cause the entire payment to disappear.

Using the Budget Lab’s Tax-Simulator model, we estimate that a per-person credit with a strict $100,000 income cutoff would cost about $450 billion. For context, the Budget Lab estimates that the administration’s tariffs will raise about $240 billion next year.

The policy would also create ongoing future interest costs due to a higher stock of debt. These costs are about 0.05% of GDP annually over the next ten years, which brings the total cost estimate to about $620B over the FY2026-2035 period.

Anyone remember the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for DOGE dividend checks? Yeah, we never got those either…

Budget experts are scoffing at Trump’s vow to give Americans $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks, which conjured memories of the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for DOGE dividend checks financed by billionaire Elon Musk’s federal budget cuts.

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— Mississippi Free Press (@mississippifreepress.org) November 16, 2025 at 7:45 AM