As the Tax Foundation’s Erica York quickly pointed out, about 150 million people make less than $100,000. She noted that sending each of them a $2,000 check would cost $300 billion, and Trump’s tariffs are only projected to raise $217 billion annually.
Archive article: https://archive.is/Ih7jO
This assumes this is an annual thing and not a one-time stunt.
I think this is a potential component in a ‘2025 sucks to make 2026 look better’.
Imagine that they use part of the tariff revenue over 18 months to issue a check roughly that size right smack dab in the middle of midterm campaign season. Maybe also implementing one of those random tariff pauses, say, 90 days covering the tail end of election season to get prices to maybe come down. If there’s one thing they should have learned is that the average person sincerely loves getting their own money back without interest and views it as a ‘nice bonus’, like they do every April.
So they drive prices up in 2025, then use some of that to ‘stimulus’ the voters as they implement pricing relief…
I think everything is coming together for them to win the midterms. People have already forgotten about USAID and similar, and maybe associate that more with Musk than Trump. People are pissed about the inflation but this would likely erase that concern particularly if they ease up for election season. They endangered people by taking away SNAP, but democrats caved and the Republicans have a chance to make short term healthcare extension and vindicate their ‘democrats caused this by being stubborn’ narrative. Further, since open enrollment closed and it’s “too late”, one thing I heard floated was implementing the subsidy as a cash rebate to those that would have benefited, and just like this refund here, that goes even further than reducing the costs in the minds of the voters. If they want a little boost they can also do things like throw RFK Jr. under the bus and install a vaguely credible person in his position, to illustrate they can improve things.