Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday contradicted President Donald Trump on his pledge to send Americans tariff rebate checks.
Trump announced on Truth Social Sunday that “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone” using money collected from tariffs. However, Bessent said on “Fox and Friends” that there has not been an official decision to send the checks.
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“There are a lot of options here that the president’s talking about, a $2,000 rebate, and those that would be for families making less than, say, $100,000,” Bessent told host Brian Kilmeade.
Kilmeade asked whether the administration had already chosen to send the checks.
“We haven’t. We haven’t,” Bessent said. “It’s in discussion.”
Moreover, after Trump made the Truth Social post, Bessent went on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday and said he had not discussed Trump’s plan with him, noting the dividend could come “in lots of forms,” according to ABC News.
“It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility on auto loans,” he said. “Those are substantial deductions that are being financed in the tax bill.”
Trump also doubled down on his plan Monday in the Oval Office. “We’re going to issue a dividend to our middle income people, and lower income people, of about $2,000 — and we’re going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt,” the president said.
Furthermore, Bessent told CNBC in August that the administration planned to use tariff revenue to reduce the debt. Trump also said in his Sunday post that tariff revenue would pay down America’s “ENORMOUS DEBT.”
The Treasury Department obtained $195 billion in tariff revenue during the first three quarters of 2025, according to its September statement.
While hearing oral argument in the Supreme Court on Trump’s tariffs on Nov. 5, Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned what the reimbursement process would look like for businesses if the tariffs were found to be illegal, suggesting it could be a “mess.”
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