Treasury Gives Update on $2,000 Checks Being Sent to Americans

In potentially at least one of the largest payouts in US history, on Sunday, November 9th, President Trump announced his plan to take the huge amount of money that's been collected from tariffs and use that money to send $2,000 checks to most American households. Meaning that as long as you are not a super high income earner, you stand to get a piece of the nearly $200 billion collected in tariffs. But there's more to it, both in terms of who might qualify, as well as whether the US Supreme Court, as well as the US Congress, will actually

allow this plan to happen. And so let me briefly give you the history of the situation, as well as the different factors that'll determine whether you will get a $2,000 check or not. Now start with on April 2nd of this year President Trump declared Liberation Day in a speech He announced that the US was basically being liberated from unfair trade agreements with countries around the whole world

Take a look. This is one of the most important days in my opinion American history It's our declaration of economic independence. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. April 2nd, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.

Also on that very same day, President Trump signed into effect the very consequential Executive Order 14257. That order, it declared a national emergency over the US's trade deficit, and it invoked authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs on most foreign imports. And so immediately, almost every country was hit with a 10% tariff, baseline tariff, followed up by country-specific

tariffs, which went all the way up to 50%. Now, since then, most countries have agreed to come to the table and work out a bilateral trade deal, but because of the baseline tariffs, the amount of money that the US Treasury has been taking in this year is truly astounding. According to the Treasury Department, $195 billion in customs duties have been collected

in the first three quarters of 2025. The Treasury Department, they also projected that tariff revenue could reach around $300 billion by the end of the calendar year, $300 billion. For your reference, that's nearly a 400% increase compared to what it was last year in 2024.

And so obviously that's a lot of money. And one of the promises that Trump made early on was to potentially give some of that money back to the American taxpayers. And indeed, just earlier this month, President Trump floated the idea of sending $2,000 checks

to both lower as well as middle class Americans.

And one of the things we're gonna do, we're gonna issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people of about $2,000. And we're going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt. We're going to be lowering our debt, which is a national

security thing. Now, that statement of his in the Oval Office, it came in conjunction with a post on Truth Social, wherein President Trump wrote the following, quote, We are taking in trillions of dollars and will soon begin paying down our enormous debt, which is 37 trillion. Record investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place, a dividend of at least $2,000 a person, not including high-income people, will be paid to everyone. Now, the trillions that he mentioned in the statement are, of course, not just tariffs

alone. It includes investment promises coming in from other nations as well as foreign companies, but the point is the same. The promise of a $2,000 dividend check being given to lower and middle income Americans. However, before you begin to earmark that money for your own household, there are a few caveats that you should know about.

The first is the legal slash political angle. You see, President Trump's announcement of these $2,000 dividend checks, it came just days after the US Supreme Court listened to oral arguments in a case that was looking to scrap these tariffs altogether.

Quote, The President's announcement on November 9th came just days after the Supreme Court heard arguments over the legality of his global tariff agenda imposed earlier this year. Justices probed Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows presidents to regulate imports in response to emergencies.

Congress, through Article I of the Constitution, has the authority to impose tariffs. Some justices seem skeptical of Trump's use of that law to impose tariffs, while others were more difficult to read, casting uncertainty over the eventual ruling and what it will mean for the president's tariff agenda.

And the Supreme Court's ruling on this particular issue, it will have direct implications on the possibility of these $2,000 dividend checks going out, because if they reverse the tariffs, a lot of that money will actually have to be sent back to the other countries. Quote, the ruling will also likely affect whether the administration can issue tariff revenue rebate checks in the first place as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett indicated in early September

that some of the revenue may need to be returned if the Supreme Court upholds a lower court order that blocked a large portion of the president's tariffs. Now, in terms of how much money specifically will have to be sent back if the Supreme Court rules against it,

the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Scott Besin, he said the following, quote, we would have to give a refund on about half the tariffs, which would be terrible for the Treasury. If the court says it, we'd have to do it. Now, setting aside the legal question

of whether Trump was legally allowed to do this or not, if that were to happen, if we have to send half the money back, that would be the absolute worst case scenario for the American consumer. That's because if you just think about how this whole thing played out, the US imposed tariffs on the goods coming into our country from other nations. Those foreign companies, they raised the prices of their goods to compensate for these tariffs. And so naturally, the American consumers had to pay more for the goods on the shelf.

But the US Treasury was able to collect more tariff revenue and therefore they plan to issue a dividend check back to the American consumers. And so in theory that worked out well. But if the Supreme Court rules that the tariffs were illegal in the first place,

they would just force the US government to send that tariff money back to those foreign companies. Meaning if that were to happen, the foreign companies were charged a tariff. They passed that tariff on in the form of an added cost to the American consumer,

but then after all was said and done, those foreign companies will get a rebate for the tariff they paid. And so the only difference that'll happen over the last year is that the American consumer had to pay more for the same goods,

while those other companies got to pad their profit margin. So obviously that's the worst scenario, which is probably exactly why President Trump was not urgently making his appeal directly to the American people through his social media posts.

In fact, just four minutes after posting his proposal about the $2,000 checks going out to the American people, President Trump followed up by saying the following, quote, without tariffs, we have none of the following just posted truth. And then obviously he didn't think that was enough because an hour later he wrote another post

criticizing the viewpoint, which says that he does not have the authority as US president to impose blanket tariffs on all US trading partners, quote. So let's get this straight. The president of the United States is allowed

and fully approved by Congress to stop all trade with a foreign country, which is far more onerous than a tariff, and license a foreign country, but is not allowed to put a simple tariff on a foreign country,

even for purposes of national security? That is not what our great founders had in mind. The whole thing is ridiculous. Other countries can tariff us, but we can't tariff them. And so this is the sort of political dynamic at play here. Trump is making an appeal regarding these tariffs

directly to the American people at the same time that the US Supreme Court is considering whether or not he had the authority to invoke them in the first place. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I'd like to quickly introduce today's sponsor, which is a phenomenal company called Patriot Mobile, possibly the best cell phone provider in America. You know, every choice we make is an

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They even have a contract buyout program. So there is literally nothing stopping you from making the switch. Just head on over to patreon.com slash Roman or call 972-PATRIOT. And best of all, use promo code Roman for a free month of service. So switch today. That's patreon.com forward slash Roman or just call 972-PATRIOT. I'll also throw all their details down into the description box below. Now, assuming that the US Supreme Court does not force the US government to give all that money back, if we just do a little back of the envelope math, we will find that the amount of money collected thus far would allow roughly 100 million Americans to receive a $2,000

dividend check. Quote, based on the Treasury Department's recent statement on the federal government's receipts and outlays, the Trump administration collected $195 billion in customs and duties in the first three quarters of 2025. That would allow 97.5 million people to receive a $2,000 dividend check. There were roughly 267 million adults in the United States in 2024, according to estimates

of the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data. That year, YouGov profiles data indicated that roughly 18% of US adults fell into the high income bracket with income of more than $100,000 per year, which would exclude them from the suggested dividend,

meaning that roughly 100 million taxpaying Americans would stand to get this money. Alternatively, though, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessen, he said that this $2,000 dividend might come in a different form.

Instead of a check being mailed to you, it might come as a tax cut. Speaking to ABC News, here's what he said. I haven't spoken to the president about this yet, but the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways.

It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing in the president's agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. Those items are substantial deductions that are currently being financed in the tax bill. Very, very cool. You'll either get a $2,000 check or the tax cuts that you already received will just be counted towards that $2,000 total. It's not clear yet. Also, if the government were to send out $2,000 checks

directly to the people, just like they did during the pandemic, they would need the support of Congress. And to that end, a few months back, you had Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri introduce the American Worker Rebate Act, which would allow tariff revenue to be used

for tax rebates of at least $600 per adult and child determined by income level. And since getting introduced in July, that bill has been read twice and referred to the Senate Committee on Finance. And so that is the current state of the $2,000 rebate checks. Basically, if you boil it down, everything hinges on this upcoming Supreme Court decision. If they decide to keep the tariffs in place, then either Congress will have to authorize

these checks to go out directly to the people, or the Treasury Department can use some kind of a tax cut scheme to distribute the money that way. On the flip side though, if the Supreme Court votes to go ahead and scrap the tariffs as they are currently formulated,

well, the Secretary of the Treasury said that they have basically a contingency plan in place for that scenario. Quote, earlier in November, Besson said that he expects the Supreme Court to uphold the IEPA based tariffs. If it strikes down the tariffs, the administration will switch to other tariff authorities, including Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which

allows broad 15% tariffs for 150 days to calm trade imbalances. Bessett said Trump can also invoke Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a statute that allows tariffs of up to 50% on countries that discriminate against U.S. commerce. And so there you have it, a solid chance of us getting $2,000 checks, but frankly enough uncertainty in the water such that I wouldn't bet the house

that the money will definitely be coming. If you'd like to read more about this issue, I will throw my research notes. You'll be able to find them down in the description box below this video, right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a quick moment to smash. And lastly, I'll quickly mention that Epoch Times is running a phenomenal promotional

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