Why Trump likely won't have to fulfill his $5,000 'dividend' promise
U.S. President Donald Trump announced during the Republican National Committee's convention on Wednesday in Dallas that every American adult citizen will get $5,000 if Republicans win both the House of Representatives and the Senate in November's midterm elections. (Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press)Social SharingThe long-standing trend of the incumbent U.S. president's party getting thumped in the midterms strongly suggests Donald Trump won't need to make good on his new promise to send every American citizen a $5,000 US cheque.
The president is pledging what he calls the "Trump dividend," but says the money will come only if the Republican Party wins control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
While the Democrats face a tough challenge to take the Senate away from Trump's party, the House is well within reach. The Republicans currently hold the slimmest possible majority in the House, with 218 of its 435 seats.
Michele Swers, professor of American Government at Georgetown University, told CBC News it will be very difficult for the Republicans to hang on to such a small majority.
"As a practical matter it's probably unlikely that they maintain control of the House, so it's not likely that this comes about," she said of the promised dividend.
The incumbent president's party has lost House seats in all but three of the 41 midterm elections dating back to the Civil War.
Since the 1960s, when a president's approval rating has been below 50 per cent, his party has lost an average of 32 House seats and has never lost fewer than nine, according to an analysis by North Star Opinion Research, a U.S. polling and strategy firm.
Trump's approval rating is currently averaging 38.5 per cent, according to the Silver Bulletin polling aggregator.
In the 2018 midterms, during Trump's first stint in office, his approval rating sat at 44 per cent heading into election day and his party lost 40 seats in the House.
This all makes Trump's promise a little bit like a Canadian party leader vowing to send every adult $5,000 if the Toronto Blue Jays win the World Series this year: contingent on an outcome that is not within his control, possible in theory, yet in reality pretty unlikely.
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If the Republicans somehow overcome Trump's low approval ratings, buck the historical trend and hang on to both chambers of Congress, the question will quickly turn to how the Treasury pays for Trump's promised dividend.
Sending $5,000 to every adult American citizen would cost more than $1.2 trillion US, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan advocacy group in Washington, D.C.
"This proposal is fiscally dangerous, economically backwards, and fundamentally unserious," said the group's president Maya MacGuineas in a news release.
"It’s hard to understand how anyone could look at our current fiscal and economic situation and think we need to borrow another $1.2 trillion to send everyone cash," MacGuineas said.
The total is approximately nine times the net revenue from Trump's tariffs since they began in March 2025.
Yet Trump is saying tariffs will pay for the dividend, and that's part of his rationale for making it contingent on Republican control of Congress.
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"If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000," Trump said in his speech at the GOP convention in Dallas on Wednesday night.
"The reason the Democrats can’t do that is because they don’t do tariffs," he said.
Also far from clear is how the government could possibly enforce the caveat that Trump added about how people can spend the $5,000.
"The dividend that we're making must be spent in the United States of America," he said. "We don't want you going to Canada to spend the money. We don't want you going to China, to Germany."
The reaction from Democrats was unsurprisingly scathing, but even some Republicans were skeptical of Trump's floated $5,000 dividend.
"Some of us think dependency is evil & soul-sucking in all its forms," said Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy in a post on X.
Bob Good, a Republican who served two terms in the House representing Virginia, slammed it as a "socialist vote-buying scheme."
Trump's promise is "pathetic and sad at the same time," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat.
"Pathetic because it's just bullshit, and sad that he had to go in front of people and basically bribe them," Newsom told The Associated Press.
The political strategy behind Trump's promise appears to be aimed at giving his supporters some motivation to get out and vote in the midterms.
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Trump said in his convention speech that his supporters should "pretend that I'm on the ballot" in the upcoming midterms.
His message suggested that he believes he can be the exception to the historical rule that midterms are not kind to the president's party.
"For some reason, even if he's really a good president or a great president — there aren't too many of them — they don't win the midterms, and nobody quite knows why," Trump said.
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Trump is battling a tough political environment heading into the midterms.
Poll after poll suggests the cost of living is the top concern among voters right now, whether it's from the war against Iran pushing up the price of gas or Trump's tariffs boosting the cost of consumer goods.
While Trump didn't admit it in his speech, his offer to send U.S. citizens $5,000 implicitly acknowledges that voters are feeling the economic pinch.
Mike Crawley is a correspondent for CBC News, based in Washington. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in B.C., spent six years as a freelance journalist in various parts of Africa, then joined the CBC in 2005. Mike reported on Ontario politics for 15 years. He was born and raised in Saint John, N.B.
