The brutal math problem behind the promise
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated that a program like this could cost around $600 billion per year to run.
That’s more than double what the administration is currently bringing in from tariffs in the first place.
In other words, to actually deliver “at least $2,000” per person at scale, the government would likely need to either find extra revenue elsewhere or borrow heavily to plug the gap.
So while the idea of a “tariff dividend” sounds straightforward – we taxed imports, now we’re sending the money back – the underlying numbers suggest something far more complicated, expensive, and politically challenging than a simple rebate check.
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