President Trump doesn’t remember promising to send $2,000 checks to Americans based on U.S. tariff revenues.
President Trump, in his recent interview with the New York Times:
Katie Rogers: You’ve promised $2,000 checks to Americans based off of your tariff revenues. When can they expect those?
President Trump: I did do that? When did I do that?
Katie Rogers: Well, I mean, your —
Trump: Yeah, I’m thinking. Well, I did $1,776 for the military.
Tyler Pager: When will those Americans get those checks?
President Trump: Well, I am going to — the tariff money is so substantial. That’s coming in, that I’ll be able to do $2,000 sometime. I would say toward the end of the year.
On November 9, 2025, President Trump posted on Truth Social:
People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. 401k’s are Highest EVER. We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone
If you’re wondering whether the tariffs are really bringing in enough revenue to send $2,000 to every non-high-income American, your doubts are well founded. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated that paying $2,000 to every person (which includes children) making $75,000 or less would cost $600 billion. For the full calendar year of 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security collected $287 billion in customs duties, taxes, and fees, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
You also may have noticed Trump’s November assertion that the U.S. has “almost no inflation.” During Trump’s presidency, it has ranged between 2.4 and 3 percent, which is significantly better than the peak during the Biden presidency, but still not low enough to alleviate consumer concerns. Today, the Consumer Price Index for December clocked in at 2.7 percent.
Nor is this the only time President Trump talked up plans to send checks to every American, counting on revenue that did not materialize on the scale he envisioned. Speaking at the Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund conference in Miami Beach, February 19, 2025, Trump said, “They’re saving billions and billions of dollars every single day, and there’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20 percent of the DOGE savings to American citizens, and 20 percent goes to paying down the debt, because the numbers are incredible.”
The DOGE savings checks never materialized, either.
In unrelated news, in 152 days, President Trump becomes an octogenarian.