President Donald Trump’s promised $5,000 “dividend” for all U.S. adults would not be paid for with taxpayer dollars, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Thursday.
“It’s not tax money,” Lutnick told NBC News in a wide-ranging interview at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where he discussed the attacks and a variety of economic issues.
He claimed that the administration could “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit, and not from taxpayers.”
Trump this week pledged that if Republicans held control of the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections, his administration would issue a “dividend” to all American adults as a reward.
“Together we’re going to deliver that plan and we’re going to pay that money to the Americans, and not from taxpayer money,” Lutnick said.
He referenced the Trump Platinum Card, an upcoming Commerce Department program that allows wealthy individuals to sign up to pay $5 million in order to extend their U.S. visas for an additional 270 days.
“We have a waitlist of more than 100,000 people who want to come,” said Lutnick. “That’s $500 billion dollars.”
Lutnick also cited an investment in Intel the administration made last year. “Everybody knows we got just about 500 million shares, and the stock was $20, and now it’s $100, so we’re up $50 billion.”
The administration spent $8.9 billion from appropriated CHIPS Act funds to make the investment in Intel. While the stock has appreciated from the government’s purchase price of $20.47 to $100.32 as of Thursday, the administration has not sold those shares — meaning the gain is merely on paper.
Other Trump administration officials have offered different explanations for where the promised $5,000 checks would come from.
On Friday, national economic council director Kevin Hassett told Bloomberg Television that the White House was considering a “reconciliation process” in Congress to fund the promised checks. Initial estimates put the cost of such a plan at around $1.3 trillion.
Vice President JD Vance suggested on Wednesday that the promised payments could come from U.S. tariff revenues. But even before the Supreme Court ordered hundreds of billions in tariff revenues to be refunded, they would not have come close to covering this cost, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
The distinction is largely one of accounting. Every dollar sent out in checks is a dollar the government cannot use to pay down debt, fund programs or reduce taxes.
Trump announced the “dividend” idea just weeks after the U.S. national debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time ever. The government’s budget deficit, the annual shortfall between revenues and spending, is nearing $1.8 trillion, its highest since March 2021.
Lutnick said the administration planned to pay down the national debt through the pursuit of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But economists widely believe this will not make a dent.
Polling shows Americans are frustrated with the administration’s economic policies, a worrisome sign for Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections.
The president’s approval rating for his handling of the economy was just 32% in a recent Associated Press poll.
An NBC News poll released in April found 52% of Americans said they strongly disapproved of the way Trump is handling inflation and the cost of living.
Lutnick said he’d give the U.S. economy a high letter grade.
“I think it’s an A-,” he said. “When we get oil to $2 a barrel, it’s an A+, and the only way to do it is to pound away at opening the spigots of oil in the world.”
“If you break Venezuela and have them produce the gas that they used to produce, three, four million barrels a day, and you break Iran’s control on the Middle East and let that oil flow, you’re going to have $2 gas for the rest of your life and the rest of our kids’ lives,” said Lutnick.
“That’s what President Trump is attacking,” he added. “He is saying, ‘I’m going to make a generational change in America. I’m going to drive the price of gas to $2 forever.’”
The average price of regular gas Friday was more than double that, at $4.29 per gallon. In parts of California, gas hit $10.
On Friday, the U.S. Consumer Price Index for August showed inflation overall rose 0.4% from July. However, core inflation emerged as a potential problem. That reading, which excludes food and energy prices, rose more than economists had expected.
This could indicate that inflation from ongoing trade wars and the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine could be spilling over into other price categories.
