President Donald Trump has hinted at when Americans can expect the $2,000 tariff rebate checks he has been promising over the last few months — and they won’t be landing anytime soon.
Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of giving cash to Americans, which he claimed is possible due to revenue generated from his trade tariffs.
The president was asked for an update on the timeline of the checks in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, where he initially replied: “I did do that? When did I do that?” according to the transcript.
“The tariff money is so substantial,” he said after being pressed further. “That’s coming in, that I’ll be able to do $2,000 sometime. I would say toward the end of the year.”
Previously, Trump told reporters that the checks would be distributed “probably in the middle of next year, a little bit later than that.”
In a follow up question, Trump was pushed by The Times about whether he needed Congress to approve the checks.
“No, I don’t believe we do,” he said. “We have it coming in from other sources.”
In the interview, Trump also repeated the false claim that a $1,776 “warrior dividend” awarded to military members before Christmas was paid for by tariff revenue.
The payments to troops came from a congressionally-approved housing supplement — money they were already set to receive — that was a part of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed in July 2025.
The White House is yet to release a concrete plan for the $2,000 checks and when asked about it, members of the administration and Trump allies have expressed varying degrees of confidence.
“We will see. We need legislation for that,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures in mid-November. Bessent later told ABC News that tariff revenue could come in many forms – indicating it may not necessarily be a paycheck akin to the first Trump administration’s stimulus checks.
Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, told reporters in November that there was enough tariff revenue “to cover those checks and not go into the rest of the budget.”
One major factor as to whether the tariff rebate checks are even possible is how the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s tariff case, a decision that is expected in a matter of days. If the court upholds Trump’s attempts to impose sweeping tariffs through the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, then the president could move forward with the one-time checks.
Trump warned Monday if the Supreme Court ruled against his tariff policies, the U.S. would be “SCREWED!”
Ariana Baio contributed reporting
