President Trump is floating an idea of using tariff income to give Americans $2,000 rebate checks. It’s a decision that Trump cannot make unilaterally – it’s Congress which controls the purse strings, and House Speaker Mike Johnson says there may be other options for using that tariff income.
“The question that we all have to decide together, he and I and the whole Congress, is do we want to pay down some of the national debt, or do you want it somehow to distribute that in payments to families and all of that?” Johnson asked.
On KEEL radio in Shreveport this week, Johnson said he’s not convinced that spending tariff income to give Americans rebate checks is the best use of that money.
“My first inclination is to try to tackle this federal debt, y’all, because it’s $30 trillion and the higher it goes, the more that costs everyone in the long run. So we’ve got to be good stewards of this,” Johnson said.
The Supreme Court may ultimately have the final say. While it’s issued preliminary rulings that’s allowed Trump to continue imposing tariffs, it has not issued a final ruling yet. If it ultimately rules that Trump improperly used emergency powers to impose tariffs, the government may have to give that money back to the countries that paid those tariffs in the first place.
