Trump has given a new update on his $5,000 “Trump Dividend” promise, again tying it to tariff revenue, as legal experts continue to question how the payments would actually work.
Donald Trump revisited the $5,000 checks he promised earlier this month, this time during an Oval Office event about a new steel plant.
The promise is the same as before: if Republicans hold the House and Senate in November, every adult American gets $5,000.
The money is supposed to come from tariffs.
“Because of tariffs, we are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of profits,” Trump said and added:
“It’s one of the reasons I can offer, if Republicans win the House and the Senate, $5,000 to every adult. And we can do it and the Democrats can’t, because the Democrats don’t have any income, and they’re gonna drive us in[to] a depression. They won’t have any money.”
The math still doesn’t really add up
Roughly 240 million adults would qualify for the dividend, and at $5,000 each, it adds up to about $1.2 trillion which doesn’t include the distribution cost, which would be far from free.
Legal experts keep pointing out that Congress controls federal spending, and something at this scale would normally need legislation first and for now nobody knows how the payments would actually get sent out.
A jab at the Democrats over prices
Trump didn’t miss the opportunity to go after Democrats on affordability.
“They like to say ‘affordability,’ but they are the ones that caused the affordability problem,” he said, tying it back to Iran.
“They were unwilling to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
The DNC’s Kendall Witmer wasn’t having it.
“The only people reaping the benefits of Trump’s economy are himself, his family, and his ultra-rich elite donors,” she said.
“Meanwhile, working families get nothing except sky-high receipts at the grocery store and the pump, unaffordable healthcare premiums, and wages that aren’t keeping up with inflation.”
Trump, however, has stuck to his own story on the economy.
“Gas prices were much higher under Biden than under ‘TRUMP,'” he posted on Truth Social last week.
“So were almost all other prices.” He’s also claimed Americans are “twice as wealthy” now, saying “your 401k is double, in a short period of time.”
If the $5,000 dividend will actually ever happen depends on three things: Republicans winning both chambers, Trump following through on his promise (not a single one of the previous $2,000 dividends promised by him last year have been sent out as of now) and a funding plan that survives contact with the Constitution.
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