The Santa Presidency
President Donald Trump can hardly conceal his disgust for the word affordability, referring to its ascendance in America’s political lexicon as a “hoax,” a “con job,” and a “fake narrative” perpetuated by Democrats. But there’s one sign that he’s treating it like a very real political vulnerability: The former reality-television host is trying to give people cash.
In recent weeks, Trump has been pitching half a dozen schemes to, in the words of White House officials, put money “straight into the pockets of the American people.” After a year in which Americans’ pocketbooks have been walloped by Trump’s tariffs, cuts to the social safety net, and apparent nonchalance in the face of spiking health-care costs, the president is turning to the allure of sweepstakes-style checks from the government to help coax voters out of their financial malaise ahead of next year’s midterm elections. It likely won’t work, economists from across the political spectrum told me; one likened the payments to a bandage over a bullet wound.
Trump has floated a payment of $2,000 to most Americans in the form of a so-called tariff dividend, to be paid out from fees levied on foreign goods. He has offered $12 billion in relief to farmers reeling from the trade war he started. He has suggested paying subsidies “directly to the people” to pay for health insurance. And as my colleagues Ashley Parker and Nancy Youssef reported, Trump used a prime-time national address on December 17 to announce onetime bonus checks for troops in the amount of $1,776. “The checks are already on the way,” Trump said of the payments to 1.4 million service members. (The Pentagon says the money, which is being taken from a fund to improve housing for troops, landed in bank accounts before Christmas.)
Although the proposals each have different designs and purposes, taken together, they represent a concerted effort to neutralize the cost-of-living concerns dominating voters’ minds. Those worries are likely to only increase as Americans contend with rising health-care costs and growing signs of unease in the labor market, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told me. Trump’s proposed payments are ill-suited to deal with those macroeconomic trend lines, he said. “It’s not a solution to anybody’s problem,” he said. “It doesn’t address inflation; it doesn’t address the weak labor market. It doesn’t address the fact that many Americans don’t have any assets and owe a lot on their credit cards.”
As the president’s first year in office comes to a close, the economy is showing signs of significant strain. A delayed jobs report earlier this month showed that the country’s unemployment rate ticked up to 4.6 percent in November, the highest since 2021. Young people and Black Americans are facing especially high rates of unemployment, which some economists see as a warning sign for the broader economy. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned recently of “a labor market that seems to have significant downside risks.” Consumer sentiment has neared record lows in recent months, a somberness that Trump appeared determined to counteract during his rambling speech on December 17, in which he blamed high prices and low wages on former President Joe Biden and shouted a series of misleading statistics about how the economy is great.
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Michael Strain, the director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told me that the president’s attempts to convince Americans that their financial circumstances are better than they think sound “eerily similar” to the strategy that Biden embraced amid widespread concerns over the cost of living. Trump’s desire to entice voters with onetime payments is unlikely to improve his standing, Strain said. “People don’t like higher prices, and they don’t like higher prices even if their incomes are going up faster than prices,” he said. “And my guess is that people’s dislike of higher prices will not be mitigated by a onetime gift from Uncle Sam.”
The White House did not respond to questions about the president’s plans for any further cash handouts, but a spokesperson disputed the idea that the payouts Trump has proposed so far were part of a broader political strategy to address affordability.
Although Trump has repeatedly described America as “the hottest country anywhere in the world” and declared that a “golden era” of prosperity has dawned, his rosy view is not widely shared by the public. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released earlier this month found that only 36 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, the lowest number the president has received on that question during his two terms (57 percent of Americans disapprove). With the midterms less than a year away, voters appear to give Democrats a slight edge over Republicans on the question of whom they trust more to handle the economy. Seventy percent of respondents said the cost of living where they reside is not very affordable or not affordable at all.
It’s little wonder, then, that Trump is repeatedly talking about brighter days ahead and promising Americans cash infusions that he says will allow them to benefit from what he has described as a deluge of dollars flowing into the country from abroad. “We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money,” Trump told reporters last month, promising that the $2,000 in “dividends” would be delivered to voters in mid-2026. There are some potential issues. The proposal would probably cost more than the roughly $200 billion that America has collected in tariffs over the past year, and Trump would presumably need congressional approval for the preelection payouts. The president has already made a habit of using the tariff money—much of it paid by American companies and consumers—as a personal reserve fund he can direct as he sees fit. Trump has said the $12 billion his administration is offering to struggling farmers is being sourced from the tariff funds. During the government shutdown in October, the president covered a lapse in funding for a nutrition program supporting women and children by unilaterally tapping tariff revenue. In announcing the $1,776 payment to troops—which he referred to as “a warrior dividend”—Trump said twice that the $2.5 billion program was made possible, in part, “because of tariffs,” though the Pentagon has clarified that the money actually comes from the military-housing stipend, which Congress has already approved.
Several Republicans oppose Trump’s tariffs—and some are privately hoping the Supreme Court will rule them unconstitutional next year. Trump proposed the $2,000 payments shortly after Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism of his power to levy broad tariffs unilaterally.
The White House has not yet provided details on Trump’s plan for the tariff dividend, though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previously said that such a plan would indeed require legislation from Congress. The proposal has faced a cool reception on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have said that any revenue from tariffs should go toward paying down the nation’s $38 trillion in debt. Trump-administration officials have sought to draw more attention to the tax bill Congress passed over the summer, reminding voters that some of its financial benefits are expected to kick in next year. Speaking at the Treasury Department earlier this month, Bessent touted a program that will offer babies born from 2025 to 2028 an investment fund seeded with a $1,000 grant from the government. Although the money in the accounts cannot be withdrawn until the year a child turns 18, the president’s allies have tried to brand the program as another instance of Trump putting money directly into Americans’ pockets.
The IRS recently revealed the process for establishing the “Trump Accounts,” launching a new website and tax form for parents to claim the money and contribute their own funds beginning in July. “Trump accounts are the president’s gift to the American people,” Bessent said at the Treasury, calling IRS Form 4547, which is named after Trump’s two presidential terms, “the most aptly named tax document of all time.” Administration officials are also trying to pitch the tax law as a more immediate boon to voters struggling with the rising price of groceries, housing, child care, and other expenses. “Next spring is projected to be the largest tax-refund season of all time,” Trump said during his prime-time address.
Provisions of the tax law signed in July were made retroactive to 2025, meaning the sliver of Americans who will benefit from reduced taxes on tipped wages, overtime, and Social Security payments will likely see larger tax refunds when they file in the new year. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on December 11 that Americans could expect an average of about $1,000 in additional tax refunds next year. But unlike Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which included a broad reduction of existing rates across income brackets, the 2025 bill was primarily designed to keep those tax cuts from expiring—meaning that many Americans will not notice as big of a difference in their take-home pay as they did eight years ago. And the wave of company-sponsored employee bonuses that Trump celebrated in 2017, after his original law significantly reduced the corporate tax rate, have not recurred.
Other provisions of the 2025 bill, including a larger deduction for state and local taxes and a new write-off for people who buy American-made vehicles, affect only a relatively small portion of the public, including wealthy people in high-tax states and those financially secure enough to purchase a brand-new car (at an average price now upwards of $50,000). The legislation’s curbs on spending for social programs, by contrast, could be felt broadly among the poorest Americans. Medicaid recipients and food-stamp beneficiaries will face some of the steepest cuts. The bill also did not address the looming expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which is set to increase premiums for some 22 million Americans next month.
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Facing angst from voters and some members of Congress over the fact that the new year will cause health-care costs to double for millions of voters, Trump is again offering cash as a salve. “I want the money to go directly to the people so you can buy your own health care; you’ll get much better health care at a much lower price,” he said in his prime-time address, resurfacing a loose proposal to turn the expiring subsidies into new government-funded health-savings accounts. But the president has not provided much detail about how the proposal would work and has not done much to push Congress to pass a new law before premiums spike. Earlier this month, four moderate Republicans vented their frustration by joining Democrats to back a discharge petition extending the current subsidies for three years. The legislation has a strong chance of passing the House in January, but faces long odds in the Senate, where Republicans have already voted down a similar proposal.
The situation has frustrated voters like Stacy Rye, a 56-year-old real-estate agent in Missoula, Montana, who is staring at a massive increase in premiums next year. Rye told me that on top of the spiking costs for coffee, beef, and other groceries she already deals with, she will have to pay an extra $6,700 next year for health-care premiums. The plan by some Republican lawmakers to offer Americans up to $1,500 for health-savings accounts did not seem like it would help much, she said.
“What am I supposed to do with $1,500 when my premium is $1,300 a month?” she said, adding that Trump’s plan to have consumers haggle with insurance companies and hospitals seemed unworkable. “These are unserious people. I can’t negotiate against a giant company about what my health premiums are going to be.”
The president’s penchant for direct government payments goes back to 2020, when Congress responded to the coronavirus pandemic by passing several pieces of legislation that offered cash to struggling Americans. Trump put his name on the checks—the first of which offered $1,200 per adult—and sent letters to voters reminding them of his role in approving the “Economic Impact Payments.”
But economists later concluded that the flood of money injected into the economy during the pandemic—an approach Biden continued after taking office in 2021—helped worsen the soaring inflation that ultimately eased Trump’s return to the White House.
Now the president is facing the reality that many of his promises to quickly turn the economy around have fallen flat with a growing number of voters. And his well-worn tactic of pitching cash payments to voters at a time of deep uncertainty about the fundamentals of the economy may not be enough to reverse their disillusionment.