(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would give American adults a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans kept the House and Senate in the midterm elections this fall, marking at least the second time he’s promised to use tariff revenue to send payments to Americans.
“Because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Trump said, likening it to what “a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders.”
ABC News has reached out to the White House for further details.
The president’s claim, which came during his speech on the first night of the GOP’s midterm convention, followed a promise he made last year to use tariff revenue to give Americans a $2,000 “dividend.”
Ten months later, those previously promised returns have yet to materialize.
“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump posted on Nov. 9, 2025, on his social media network, before adding, “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
The next day, Trump doubled down.
“And one of the things we’re going to do, we’re going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower income people of about $2,000,” the president said at the time. “And we’re going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt.”
White House officials were exploring ways to execute the plan put forward by Trump, then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time, but she did not provide details about specific options.
“The president made it clear he wants to make it happen,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House. “So his team of economic advisers are looking into it.”
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment on the $2,000 “dividend.”
A “dividend” typically describes a payout to individual shareholders, funded by a company’s profits. Trump as he announced the $2,000 “dividend” said they would be coming at a time of prosperity, touting in his post that U.S. stock markets were near all-time highs and there had been a “record” investment in the U.S. He said that “plants and factories going up all over the place.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos at the time that the $2,000 dividend “could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda — you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans.”
He said the “dividend” may come “in lots of forms.”
If Trump’s proposals came in the form of a one-time payout to Americans, they could be similar to the three stimulus checks mailed to Americans during the pandemic, two of which were authorized by Trump.
Those three payments totaled as much as $3,200 per tax filer, as well as $2,500 per child, according to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a watchdog established by Congress.
Trump said in his speech on Wednesday that at least some of that $5,000 would be expected to come from tariff revenue, though the mechanism and legality of delivering on that promise are unclear.
Not only did the $2,000 “dividend” payments never come for Americans — but much of the revenue collected by the government from Trump’s tariffs had to be paid back to the companies.
The Trump administration paid out a milestone $100 billion in tariff refunds through the end of July, according to an August court filing. That was more than half of the $166 billion owed to thousands of American businesses who paid the tariffs that were later struck down by the Supreme Court.
Trump added on Wednesday that the only condition attached to the proposed “dividend” would be that the distributed money must be spent in the U.S.
ABC News’ Max Zahn contributed to this report.
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