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Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson joins other Senate Republicans in arguing that money earned from President Donald Trump’s tariffs would be better spent on easing the $38 trillion national deficit
Joe SommerladTuesday 25 November 2025 14:44 GMTComments
CloseTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent says there are other ways for Donald Trump to impose tariffs if Supreme Court rejects administration's arguments
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Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has unexpectedly broken with President Donald Trump over his proposal to hand out tariff dividend checks worth “at least” $2,000 to American taxpayers, saying bluntly: “We can’t afford it.”
During an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Monday, Johnson, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, was asked: “So, what about the $2,000 checks the president has been talking about?
“Would that fly in terms of passing the Congress, or do you expect that the only way that could actually see the light of day is through a second reconciliation package?”
open image in galleryMaria Bartiromo interviews Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson about President Donald Trump's proposed $2,000 tariff dividend checks on Fox Business on November 24, 2025 (Fox Business)The senator, usually a MAGA loyalist, answered: “Well first of all, Maria, we’re $38 trillion in debt. We’ve averaged $1.89 trillion deficits over the last five years. In the next 10 years, the projection’s about $26 trillion from accumulated deficits. We have to address the deficit problem.
“We are on borrowed time here. So many people are whistling by the graveyard. If we’re bringing in revenue through the tariffs, that oughta be applied to reduce the deficit, not just making a cash payment to Americans.”
“It sounds like you would vote ‘no’ in terms of $2,000 checks going to individuals,” Bartiromo responded.
“We can’t afford it,” Johnson shrugged. “I wish we were in a position to return the American public their money, but we’re not. Again, we’ll have at least a $2 trillion deficit this year.
“Again, that compares to prior to the pandemic, President Trump had deficits of $800 billion. Obama, his last four years, $550 billion a year. Now, we’re $2 trillion? Completely unacceptable. We have to start focusing on that and doing something about it.”
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office downgraded its estimate of the amount of money it expected Trump’s tariff program to generate, concluding it could make only a $3 trillion dent in the national deficit over the next decade, after putting the total at $4 trillion in August.
That complicated the policy the president first announced in a post on Truth Social on November 10, in which he declared that only “FOOLS” opposed his tariffs, whose future is currently being weighed up by no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court.
open image in galleryPresident Donald Trump delivers remarks on his reciprocal tariffs policy in the White House Rose Garden on April 2 this year, which he branded ‘Liberation Day’ (AP)“We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price,” Trump said.
“We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
The idea quickly came up against opposition from Johnson’s fellow Republican deficit hawks in the Senate, not least Majority Leader John Thune, who said he would rather see the revenue from the tariffs be used to pay down the debt, arguing that would be the more effective means of tackling inflation than simply giving consumers bonus cash.
Details about how the proposal might actually be realised have since been scarce, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vague about the practicalities during an interview with ABC News’s This Week earlier this month, when he said only that the “$2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, lots of ways.”
“It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda,” he continued. “You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Deductibility of auto loans.”
The president himself has since blurred the timeline on when the checks might ultimately be delivered, claiming he would “probably” send them out “somewhere prior to... the middle of next year,” or, perhaps, “a little bit later than that.”
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