Donald Trump reveals how he will fund $2,000 tariff ‘dividend’ checks for most Americans

As is to be expected in tandem with such a lofty promise made without a concrete outline of how it will actually come to pass, there are a lot of doubters.

Economist Erica York wrote back when Trump announced the plan: “If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion. … Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.”

Meanwhile, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, handing out the $2,000 dividend to the majority of Americans could run up a bill as high as $600 billion. For the record, that’s over five times as much as the anticipated revenue from Trump’s tariffs, imposed back in April.

Regardless of what critics have to say, the tariffs themselves have made money. So far, it’s estimated the US have pulled in somewhere close to $90 billion from many key countries around the world.

Even so, you don’t need to be a mathematics savant to know that $90 billion is still desperately short of the $600 billion the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget believe will be required.

So, how is Trump going to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and save face?