Will Americans ever see the US$5,000 ‘dividend’ Trump promised voters if Republicans keep control of Senate, House?

Article content

U.S. President Donald Trump has promised US$5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in November’s midterm elections.

Article content

The pledge has raised questions about its legality, its cost and where the money would come from.

Article content

Article content

Is it legal?

Article content

Federal law prohibits offering payments in exchange for votes and separately restricts promises of federally funded benefits in return for political support.

Article content

Article content

Trump’s offer would appear to skirt these prohibitions because it is more in the nature of a campaign promise and would apply to all adult Americans regardless of how they voted.

Article content

Article content

Any such payment would in any case require congressional authorization, as the U.S. Constitution bars the president from spending Treasury funds without an appropriation made by law.

Article content

But Trump told CBS News Texas he did not think Congress would need to approve the payments, without going into details.

Article content

Trump has made similar pledges in the past which never came about, including promising Americans US$2,000 checks from tariff revenues and US$5,000 checks from savings made from drastic federal job cuts.

Article content

How much would it cost?

Article content

There are about 276.8 million adults aged 18 and over in the United States, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and doling out US$5,000 to each would come to US$1.384 trillion.

Article content

Trump said he was targeting “every American.” Restricting the payments to U.S. citizens would reduce that figure to about US$1.27 trillion.

Article content

During the COVID pandemic, Congress approved payouts to income-eligible tax filers and their dependents only, a narrower approach that would lower the cost further.

Article content

Article content

The three rounds of pandemic stimulus checks approved in 2020 and 2021 came to about US$814 billion in total, according to federal oversight data.

Article content

Article content

Would the checks make inflation worse?

Article content

Almost certainly. This is a serious problem for Trump as he faces voter anger over costs of living.

Article content

Direct cash handouts of this kind are sometimes described by economists as “helicopter money” — a term for no-strings-attached payouts from a central bank, meant to jolt an economy out of deflation, the opposite of the price pressures the United States faces now.

Article content

U.S. consumer inflation is running at 3.4 per cent, well above the central bank’s two per cent long-term target. Injecting roughly US$1.27 trillion into consumer hands would stir demand in an economy where prices are already rising, partly because of the energy shock from the Iran war.

Article content

Research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimated that pandemic-era fiscal stimulus, which also included support for businesses, added about 2.6 percentage points to U.S. inflation.

Article content

Could tariff money pay for Trump’s new promise?

Article content

Not anytime soon. The government collected a record US$195 billion in customs duties in fiscal 2025, meaning a US$1.4 trillion payout would consume roughly seven years of revenues from Trump’s trade policies.