Deputy White House Chief of Staff James Blair said the Trump administration is eyeing ways to give millions of Americans $2,000 dividend checks from tariff revenue without congressional approval, according to Bloomberg Government.
Although Blair said they would try "as hard as possible" to cut checks without the approval of Congress, he did express some skepticism, they report.
“We will look as hard as possible to see if there’s a way to do it without Congress because we’re circumspect about Congress wanting to stop [them],” Blair said at a Bloomberg Government event on Tuesday. “The law is the law. I think that the most likely outcome is, it requires an act of Congress.”
Saying these checks could be part of a future reconciliation bill, Blair said President Donald Trump could find a way to issue them on his own.
Trump has stated that $2,000 tariff dividend checks will be sent to moderate and middle-income Americans around mid-2026, something that experts say would "explode the deficit."
These comments come after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that such checks would need legislation and congressional input.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has estimated that a round of checks would cost around $600 billion, significantly exceeding the annual revenue collected from Trump's new tariffs, which was projected to be roughly $300 billion.
The proposed checks would go to “the working class,” Blair said, but the White House hasn’t yet unveiled an income threshold on who would receive them.