Trump’s $2000 Tariff Payout: 2020 Crypto Bull Run To Repeat?
Key Takeaways
- Donald Trump wants to send Americans $2,000 “dividends” funded by tariff revenue.
- The move recalls the 2020 CARES Act era, when $1,200 stimulus checks coincided with a wave of retail crypto buying.
- Unlike pandemic stimulus funded by borrowing, the proposed payments would rely on tariff proceeds.
President Donald Trump said he wants to send “a dividend of at least $2,000” to most Americans funded by tariff revenues, a pitch aimed at rallying public support for his trade policy.
The move has already provided some movement in crypto markets, with Bitcoin (BTC) surging almost 5% in the last 24 hours.
Trump’s recent idea has raised questions about whether new stimulus checks would provide the same positive impact on crypto as his last handouts in 2020.
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Trump’s New Tariff Payout Plan
On Sunday, Nov. 9, Trump took to Truth Social to share his new plan:
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high-income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Although the idea would likely need approval from Congress, The Guardian reported that Missouri Republican Josh Hawley introduced legislation for $600 tariff rebates to most Americans and their dependents earlier this year.
Hawley claimed that after “four years of [Joe] Biden [White House] policies,” families deserve a tax rebate and should share in “the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.”
The Guardian reported cost estimates suggesting a $2,000 per-person payment far exceeds what has been collected from tariffs.
Erica York of the Tax Foundation wrote that a benefit capped at $100,000 of income could cover around 150 million adults at a cost of $300 billion.
Meanwhile, billionaire philanthropist John Arnold has estimated the idea could run as high as $513 billion.
Could Dividends Boost Crypto Trading Like They Did in 2020?
When the $1,200 CARES Act payments hit bank accounts in April 2020, several exchanges observed a surge in exactly $1,200 deposits and buys.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he saw a spike in $1,200 transactions, and Binance.US reported a similar pattern at the time, Forbes noted.
One Reddit thread from the time also detailed apparent dividend recipients using the entire total to buy crypto.
Academic research also backed up this phenomenon with studies finding a boost in $1,200 trades.
A Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland working paper by Anantha Divakaruni and Peter Zimmerman found “a significant increase in Bitcoin buy trades for the modal EIP amount of $1,200”.
The study estimated the program boosted Bitcoin trading volume in the U.S. by about 3.8% between April 9 and June 5, 2020, with the effect being most substantial on exchanges serving retail users.
However, the researchers judged the market-wide impact to be modest, claiming that the trading boost translated into a small price rise representing a tiny share of total stimulus dollars.
Stimulus checks were clearly detectable in crypto order flow, but they weren’t a dominant driver of Bitcoin’s rally on their own.
What’s Different Now?
Unlike pandemic relief funded by federal borrowing, Trump’s payout would draw on tariff proceeds.
This means that enough money must actually be available to distribute, and, based on current estimates, the proceeds may fall short of the cost of issuing $2,000 checks unless eligibility is tightly constrained.
On Polymarket, over 80% of traders have bet “No” on “Will Trump create a tariff dividend in 2025?”
Meanwhile, today’s tariff regime is already imposing the highest effective rates since the 1930s, a backdrop that could easily blunt consumer appetite for…
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