Last week, President Trump used social media to propose, probably with no plan of any kind, that his tariffs would be used to fund payments to U.S. households.
“A dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump posted.
The next day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent politely revealed that he had no idea what the president was talking about, saying “the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways. It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda — no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security – deductibility on auto loans.”
If, as Bessent suggests, Trump’s promised “dividend” is actually the tax cuts provided by the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) enacted this past summer, it violates his promise that it will not go to “high income people” many times over.
After all, the richest 5 percent alone will receive 45 percent of the net tax cuts next year, according to our analysis. We also find that OBBBA will provide the richest 1 percent with an average tax cut of $66,000 next year — 33 times the $2,000 payment that Trump says his tariffs can provide to households.
If Bessent is only referring to OBBBA’s new tax breaks touted as benefits for the middle-class — tax breaks for tips, overtime, car loan interest and seniors — those together make up only about a tenth of the total tax cuts provided next year. Those provisions are window dressing for a tax law that has the obvious purpose of benefiting the “high-income people” Trump claims will not benefit from his “dividends.”
Of course, the $2,000 dividend idea is a not-even-slightly-baked idea that popped into the President’s mind and should not be taken seriously, except as a demonstration of how unserious he is about helping anyone who is not rich.
