The president also says he doesn’t need Congress to pass enabling legislation.
President Donald Trump said in a new interview that he believes the administration does not need congressional approval to send out tariff-derived payments to Americans, saying it could happen later in 2026.
Several White House officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and economic adviser Kevin Hassett, had said it would require an act of Congress.
“No, I don’t believe we do. We have it coming in from other sources,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Jan. 8, responding to a question about whether he needs Congress to pass a measure.
According to a transcript published on Jan. 11, when asked about when those payments would be disbursed, Trump said: “The tariff money is so substantial. … I’ll be able to do $2,000 sometime. I would say toward the end of the year.”
Later in the interview, he was asked whether the tariff revenue could also be used to reduce the U.S. national debt.
“It’s going to all of those things,” Trump said.
The president also appeared to downplay concerns that there wouldn’t be enough revenue from the tariffs when a New York Times journalist raised it.
“We also have growth. We also have tremendous growth in the country. We have tariff revenue, which is tremendous,” Trump said. “It’s given us tremendous national security.”
In November 2025, Bessent said in an interview with Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that the administration would need Congress to pass legislation. A similar comment was made by Hassett, who heads the White House’s National Economic Council, during a news conference that month.
“It’s something that will require legislation, but if you look at how much tariff revenue has been coming in, then there would actually be enough room to cover those checks and not go into the rest of the budget,” Hassett said at the time.
The White House was also “actively studying the matter and getting the numbers straight, so the president has all the choices he needs to decide what to do” on whether the administration is lobbying Congress to send the payments, he said.
