Taxpayers across the country appear to be in line for a $2,000 tariff dividend check. The only problem is that no one knows exactly when the checks will be sent.
Last summer President Trump said such checks would be funded due to the billions of dollars in tariffs fees accumulated by the increased tariffs.
In November Trump said the payouts would specifically target “middle-income and lower-income people.” In making those comments, the President also said recipients could most likely expect to receive such checks “probably in the middle of next year.”
“We’re going to be issuing dividends later on, somewhere prior to, probably in the middle of next year,” Trump continued, or “a little bit later than that.”
Earlier this month in an interview with the New York Times, Trump commented: “The tariff money is so substantial.” But he suggested an extended timetable for when checks will be sent out, remarking “I would say toward the end of the year.”
Various sources have maintained that any issuance of checks would have to first be approved by Congress. That process would follow the same procedure as was seen in 2020 and 2021 when the federal government issued what were popularly called stimulus checks during the months of the Covid 19 pandemic.
For his part, Trump, in a press conference on January 20, said, “I don’t think we’d have to go the Congress route, but you know, we’ll find out.”
According to an independent analysis done by the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the tariff revenue checks could cost the federal government upwards of $600 billion, while the actual tariff revenue thus far collected has been roughly a third of that amount.
January 22, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
