Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump said Saturday he remains open to offering a rebate to middle- and low-income Americans, citing a surge in federal revenue from his administration’s tariff policies.
Speaking with reporters before boarding Air Force One, Trump said the U.S. Treasury took in $29.6 billion in July and suggested that some of the funds could be returned to the public.
“Well, we’re going to pay down debt. We have a lot of money coming in, much more money than the country’s ever seen, by hundreds of billions of dollars. And there could be a distribution or dividend to the people of our country,” Trump said.
“I would say, for people that would be middle-income people and lower-income people, we could do a dividend, but one of the things we’re going to be doing is reducing debt,” he added. “We have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our country now. We should have done this many years ago.”
Trump has credited his tariff policies for the influx of revenue, brushing off critics who predicted the duties would drive up inflation. He said his initial efforts to impose tariffs on China during his first term were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I did it in my first term with China. We didn’t get to the rest because COVID hit, and you couldn’t really go to France and Spain and Italy, and say, ‘Let’s … start talking about some tariffs,’” Trump said. “But China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we did it then. Then Biden screwed it all up … Everything he touched, he screwed up.”
The idea of distributing tariff revenue directly to Americans was first raised by Trump last month in remarks to reporters ahead of a trip to Scotland.
RSBN previously reported in July that Republican Senator Josh Hawley (Mo.) introduced legislation that would send rebate checks to taxpaying Americans.
“Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of Biden policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said in a statement.
He added, “Like President Trump proposed, my legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.”
