President Donald Trump has announced a plan to send direct payments of at least $2,000 to most Americans, with the funds coming from tariffs his administration has imposed on foreign goods.

Trump announced the proposal on Truth Social, stating that high-income earners would be excluded from receiving payments. “A dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” he said.

The administration has not released specifics about income thresholds for eligibility. For comparison, pandemic-era stimulus checks used income limits of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for families.

The proposed payments would draw from tariff revenue, which are taxes companies pay on imported goods. The Treasury Department reports that tariffs have brought in approximately $195 billion during the first three quarters of this year.

Trump has positioned tariff revenue as serving dual purposes. “We’ll pay back debt, but we also might make a distribution to the people, almost like a dividend to the people of America,” Trump said recently.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has clarified that no formal payment plan currently exists. He suggested that benefits to Americans could come through tax policy changes instead.

“It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda,” Bessent said in a recent interview. “You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Deductibility of auto loans.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans received three rounds of stimulus payments totaling up to $1,200 in April 2020, $600 in December 2020, and $1,400 in March 2021.

Generative AI was used to organize information for this story, based on original material from Advance Local. It was reviewed and edited by MassLive.