Trump Proposes $5,000 Midterm 'Dividend' Restricted to Domestic Spending

President Donald Trump says his proposed $5,000 “Trump dividends” would come with a significant caveat: Recipients would have to spend the money in the United States.

Trump unveiled the proposal in a keynote address at the Republican midterm convention Wednesday in Dallas. He said every adult U.S. citizen would receive $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the November midterms.

The money, he stipulated, could not be spent abroad.

“We don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money,” he told the crowd. “We don’t want you going to China, to Germany.”

Trump repeated that condition in an interview with CBS News the following day.

“We do have one proviso, and that's that the money be spent... people spend their money in the United States. We don't want to have that money spent in other countries,” he said.

The eye-catching proposal has drawn immediate skepticism, including questions about its legality, cost and whether Trump could authorize such payments without Congress.

Some critics have characterized it as an unprecedented effort to influence voters ahead of the midterms. Sarah Smith, the BBC’s North America editor, said the pledge could potentially run afoul of federal law.

“It’s not clear that it’s legal to make a promise like that because it is against the law to try and offer a payment to anybody to influence how they’re going to vote,” Smith said.

When asked why he doesn’t simply send out the checks now by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Trump provided an inscrutable answer. He said: “Because the Democrats can’t do it. Because with them, it’s negative growth. With us, it’s so positive.”

Any broad federal payment program would also presumably require authorization from Congress, which controls federal spending. The pandemic-era stimulus checks, for comparison, were authorized through legislation, including the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.

Asked by CBS News whether the “Trump Dividends” would require congressional approval, Trump said: “Well, we think not. I think they will do it if we needed it. But we think not.”

The cost would also be immense. Using the Census Bureau’s estimate of 258.3 million U.S. adults in 2020, $5,000 payments to every adult would total roughly $1.3 trillion. For context, the entire federal government spent about $7 trillion in fiscal year 2025.

Trump has insisted the government can afford the proposal in part because of revenue from his sweeping tariff regime.

“We've taken in trillions of dollars in tariffs and other things. We have now over $20 trillion worth of manufacturing plants and other investments being made in the United States, which is far greater than ever before,” he told CBS News.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the cumulative tariff revenue between October 2025 and June 2026 was $163 billion.