President Donald Trump said he could promise Americans would receive the $2,000 tariff rebate checks, but he hasn’t “made the commitment yet.”
In an interview with NBC Nightly News’ Tom Llamas on Wednesday, Feb. 4, the anchor, 46, asked Trump, 79, about the “idea of $2,000 rebate checks for Americans from tariff revenue,” adding, “Who’s gonna get that and… when is that gonna happen?”
“We’d make it — I — I’m gonna — I’m looking at it very seriously,” Trump replied, per NBC News’ transcript. “I’m the only one can do it because I’m takin’ in hundreds of billions of dollars of money from tariffs…”
“But you can promise some Americans will get those checks?” Llamas asked.
“Oh yeah, sure. I can — I can do that. I haven’t made the commitment yet, but I may make the commitment,” Trump said, before claiming that he “just gave $1,776” to U.S. military servicemembers.
When Llamas pressed for the president to clarify, Trump continued discussing the “Warrior Dividend” program that he and the Department of Defense announced on Dec. 18. Money to pay for those checks came from the Big Beautiful Bill, according to the White House.
“You know, it was $1,775. They presented it to me because that’s what we have in a budget that I created ‘cause I wanted to take care of our military. Nobody takes care of the military like I do,” Trump claimed, before mentioning that he added $1 to the amount to make it a “very famous date,” referring to the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
The president was also asked about the tariffs and his statement about sending rebate checks to Americans in a January interview with The New York Times‘ White House correspondents Katie Rogers and Tyler Pager.
“You’ve promised $2,000 checks to Americans based off of your tariff revenues. When can they expect those?” Rogers asked in the interview, published on Jan. 11.
The president initially similarly questioned her, asking, “I did do that? When did I do that?”
Rogers replied, “Well, I mean, your —,” but Trump seemingly interjected to say, “Yeah, I’m thinking. Well, I did $1,776 for the military.”
Pager followed up by asking for the timeline. “When will those Americans get those checks?”
“Well, I am going to,” Trump replied. “The tariff money is so substantial. That’s coming in, that I’ll be able to do $2,000 sometime. I would say toward the end of the year.”
When asked if he would need Congressional approval, Trump replied, “No, I don’t believe we do. We have it coming in from other sources.”
PEOPLE has previously reached out to the White House regarding the rebate checks.
The president promised the $2,000 tariff rebate checks in a Nov. 9 Truth Social post. “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,” he wrote at the time.
