President Donald Trump has promised a $5,000 "dividend" to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress in November. But he has yet to explain where the money would come from. "If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them," Trump said at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday, "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000." The president said the payment would be called the "Trump Dividend" and stipulated that recipients would have to spend the money in the United States.
He did not explain how such a requirement would be enforced. Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email outside of regular working hours and is awaiting a response. The pledge is the latest in a series of proposals from Trump and Republican lawmakers to return money to Americans through government savings or tariff revenues.
Trump previously floated $2,000 tariff-funded payments, while, in early 2025, he backed consideration of a separate "DOGE dividend" (Department of Government Efficiency) based on savings identified by Elon Musk's government-cutting initiative. Neither proposal has produced payments to Americans. The scale of Trump's latest promise, however, would dwarf those earlier proposals.
The Census Bureau estimated in its 2024 American Community Survey that there were about 245.3 million U.S. citizens aged 18 or older. Providing each with $5,000 could therefore cost roughly $1.22 to $1.23 trillion, not including any potential administrative expenses. The precise cost would depend on who qualifies. , using a broader estimate of approximately 270 million U.S. adults, calculated a potential cost of about $1.35 trillion.
Vice President JD Vance subsequently suggested that wealthy Americans might not receive the payments, which could reduce the total, although no income threshold has been announced. Trump offered no detailed funding mechanism on Wednesday, instead attributing the proposal to what he described as the country's economic strength. Tariff revenue is one possible source.
Vance suggested following Trump's announcement that the dividend could be financed through tariffs, and the president has repeatedly promoted tariff proceeds as a potential source of direct payments. But the sums collected so far are nowhere near enough to finance a $1.2 trillion payment. The U.S. collected about $195 billion in customs duties during the 2025 fiscal year, according to figures cited by The , up sharply from $77 billion the previous year but still less than one-sixth of the amount required for the new dividend proposal.
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