Minister of Finance Scott Bessant said Sunday that “working families” would receive the $2,000 rate checks Donald Trump has proposed, providing the clearest clue yet about who could benefit from the White House plan.
Bessent says rate controls target working families
“[The dividends] for working families. We will have an income limit,” says Bessent told host Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
On Sunday, Trump proposed sending “at least” $2,000 to most Americans, saying his administration would use revenue from his sweeping tariff program to help pay off the nation’s roughly $38.12 trillion debt.
Neither Bessent nor Trump have said exactly which income groups are eligible for the checks. However, the Minister of Finance hinted at a Fox & Friends interview last week that the government is considering caps of about $100,000 on household income.
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Congress must approve the plan amid the stimulus saga
It’s worth noting that Bessent said during the same interview that such a “tariff dividend” would require congressional approval. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress approved three rounds of stimulus payments, two of which Trump signed, with full checks going to individuals making up to $75,000 and couples making up to $150,000 and phased amounts above. More than 476 million total payments have been made, totaling $814 billion, according to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
According to a September report, the Treasury Department collected $195 billion in tariffs in the first three quarters of this year, far less than what would be needed to finance $2,000 for “most Americans” and still reduce the national debt.
Tariffs that finance dividends also drive up consumer prices
Economists note that the same tariffs intended to finance the checks have also increased prices. Analysis from Yale’s Budget Lab shows that consumers now face an average effective tariff of about 18%, the highest since the 1930s, after the government imposed broad tariffs on imports earlier this year. Researchers say companies have passed on much of the cost to American households, with lower-income families hit hardest.
Photo courtesy: Maxim Elramsisy on Shutterstock.com
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