How Trump Could Hand Out $2,000 Without Reigniting Inflation

A better idea than sending out "tariff dividend" checks.

Nov 20, 2025

Handing Out $2,000 Without Reigniting Inflation

President Trump has now put a timetable on his latest populist promise: $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks for most Americans, funded out of his new tariffs, starting around the middle of 2026—conveniently, just in time for the midterms.

Depending on how they draw the income lines, that’s hundreds of billions of dollars in new federal transfers. Even some Republicans in Congress are already warning that mailing out another round of checks in this environment is “potentially…somewhat inflationary.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about that this week. Asked directly on Fox News whether the checks would be inflationary, he didn’t say “no.” Instead, he offered this:

“Maybe we could persuade Americans to save that.”

Hope is not a macroeconomic strategy. If you drop $200–$300 billion of fresh purchasing power into people’s bank accounts a few months before an election, a lot of it is going to be spent. That’s the point.

But there is a way for Trump to keep his $2,000 promise, boost sentiment among his base, and do it in a way that’s far less inflationary than cutting everyone another stimulus check.

It involves crypto, retirement accounts, and a little bit of time-locking.

The Problem With $2,000 Checks

We’ve already run this experiment.

The COVID-era stimulus checks pushed up household cash balances and helped fuel one of the biggest bursts of consumer spending (and price inflation) in decades. Economists who’ve looked at those payments and similar transfers have consistently found a fairly high “marginal propensity to consume”: people spend a large chunk of any windfall, especially lower- and middle-income households.

You don’t need an econometrics paper to get the basic point, but if you want one: analysts quoted by Newsweek and the Tax Foundation have been blunt that sending out broad-based checks at a time of elevated prices is “a recipe for higher inflation.”

Trump’s team knows this, which is why Bessent is already trying to pre-spin the plan as something Americans may “save” rather than spend. But if you wire $2,000 in cash into people’s checking accounts, you can’t control what they do with it.

If the White House is serious about avoiding another inflation spike, it needs to change the form of the $2,000, not just the branding.

Trump’s Base Is Already Long Crypto

Here’s where things get interesting.

Whatever you think of crypto, it has become a distinct political constituency:

A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll in 2024 found that voters who own cryptocurrency favored Trump over Kamala Harris by about 12 points, while non-crypto holders lean toward Harris by a similar margin.
A Gallup/Associated Press write-up this summer noted that Republicans report owning crypto at higher rates than Democrats (roughly 16% vs. 10%), even though ownership is still a minority across the population.
Paradigm’s June 2024 GOP survey found 28% of Republicans had bought or owned crypto, above the national average of registered voters, and that non-white Republicans were particularly likely to be crypto owners.
Separate polling this year found that Bitcoin owners are “more Republican” than the general electorate and skew younger and higher income.

On top of that, Trump has very publicly embraced the sector. A Washington Post review found more than one in five high-level Trump appointees or nominees held crypto-related assets, and Trump himself has disclosed tens of millions tied to crypto ventures.

So you’ve got:

A President who has branded himself “the crypto president,” and
A crypto-owning bloc that leans his way and could matter in close races, especially in the 2026 midterms.

And yet his flagship populist proposal is…more paper checks.

There’s a better way to line these pieces up.

From Tariff “Checks” to Tariff Crypto Retirement Accounts

Instead of sending $2,000 in cash, Trump could send $2,000 in crypto, in accounts that Americans can’t spend until retirement.

Call them:

“Tariff Dividend Retirement Accounts,” or
“Freedom Crypto Accounts,” or, if you really want to trigger the usual suspects,
“Social Security Freedom Accounts.”

Mechanically, you’d do something like this:

Create a new federal retirement account wrapper.
Think of a cousin of the IRA: individually owned, no early withdrawals, and taxable on distribution like a traditional IRA. Current law already allows tax-favored accounts; Congress just keeps tweaking contribution rules.
Seed every eligible American under, say, age 65 with $2,000 of crypto instead of cash.
The money would come from tariff revenue, just like Trump’s current plan – but it would go straight into these locked accounts.
Use a simple, rules-based crypto index.
For example, a market-cap-weighted basket of the top 10 coins that meet basic criteria (liquidity, no obvious scams, U.S.-compliant). In practice, that means most of the money ends up in Bitcoin and Ethereum, with smaller weightings in the others.
Time-lock it.
No withdrawals before the normal retirement age – pick 65, 67, or whatever Congress settles on. No loans, no early withdrawals for “hardship.” This isn’t meant to be another checking account; it’s forced savings.
Tax it on the way out.
On distribution, treat withdrawals like traditional IRA income and tax them at ordinary income rates. That gives the Treasury a chance to recoup a big chunk of the initial outlay later – or even more than it put in, if crypto appreciates over the following decades.

Could this be branded as a type of “Social Security private account”? Politically, sure. Legally, it would probably need to sit alongside Social Security rather than inside it. Under current law, the Social Security trust fund itself is required to be invested in special Treasury securities, not Bitcoin or altcoins. So you’d need a new statutory account structure, not a simple relabeling of the existing trust fund.

If that sounds far-fetched, note that the Trump administration is already pushing in this direction. Bessent has touted new “Trump accounts” for children born between 2025 and 2028 – investment accounts seeded with $1,000 from the Treasury, with parents allowed to add more – as part of the big tax bill. Moving from kids’ Trump accounts to tariff-funded adult crypto retirement accounts is more of a step than a leap.

Why This Is Less Inflationary Than Cash

Would this still “stimulate” something? Yes: crypto prices.

But that’s very different from stimulating day-to-day consumer prices:

When you send people cash, a large fraction gets spent quickly on goods and services – the stuff in the CPI basket. That’s what we saw with prior stimulus rounds, and why mainstream analysts warn that another round of checks would risk reigniting inflation.
When you stuff $2,000 of locked-up crypto into a retirement account, there’s no immediate increase in spendable income. Recipients can see the number on a screen, but they can’t tap it for groceries or rent.

There’s still a “wealth effect” – people who feel richer tend to spend a bit more – but it’s much smaller. A recent paper using household transaction data finds that when people get crypto gains, only about 9% of those gains translate into extra consumption. That’s from gains they can actually cash out, not from assets they’re barred from touching for 30 years.

So instead of dropping hundreds of billions in spendable cash into the economy right before an election, you’d be:

Converting tariff revenue into illiquid, long-term savings, and
Concentrating the “stimulus” in asset prices (crypto) rather than in immediate demand for goods and services.

If you’re worried about headline inflation and groceries, that’s a much safer place for the energy to go.

Why Trump’s Base (and Libertarians) Might Like It

Politically, this does a few useful things at once.

It rewards Trump’s crypto-friendly coalition.
Crypto owners already lean more Republican and more pro-Trump than the general electorate. A program that explicitly channels tariff revenue into crypto – and likely pushes prices up – is a direct boost to that crowd.
It creates millions of new crypto holders overnight.
If every working-age American gets a seeded account, you’ve massively expanded the number of people with some skin in the crypto game. Those people will remember who created that account.
It appeals to small-government and libertarian types.
Instead of using tariff revenue to grow some new federal program, you’re using it to capitalize private accounts. Over time, those balances belong to individuals, not to the state. And because withdrawals are taxable, you’re not blowing a permanent hole in the revenue base; you’re shifting it into the future.
It still gives Trump a clean campaign line.
“I gave every working American $2,000 in a Freedom Retirement Account funded by our tariffs on China. The other guy gave you inflation.”

That’s better politics than: “I mailed you a check, and then your grocery bill went up again.”

What It Would Take

None of this happens by executive order alone.

Trump’s existing “tariff dividend” promise already assumes new legislation; Bessent himself has conceded they “need legislation for that.” If you’re going to drag a tariff-dividend bill through Congress anyway, you might as well structure it in a way that doesn’t recreate the inflation spike everyone claims to hate.

A serious version of this idea would require:

A new, federally recognized retirement account type (or a dedicated subclass of IRA/401(k)) that allows crypto exposure, building on the administration’s push to open 401(k)s to “alternative assets” like crypto.
A statutory formula for seeding accounts with tariff revenue and for capping eligibility (income thresholds, age, citizenship/residency, etc.).
Clear time-lock and tax rules so that people understand they’re getting long-term savings, not a new debit card.

None of that is trivial. But it’s no harder than designing the direct-check scheme they’re already talking about – and arguably easier to sell to deficit hawks and monetary conservatives.

A Better Version of the Same Promise

Trump’s $2,000 “tariff dividend” idea has two obvious goals:

Convince voters they’re personally benefiting from his tariff policy; and
Do it in a way that doesn’t blow up inflation again before 2026.

In its current “we’ll just mail you checks” form, the second goal is wishful thinking. If you want people not to spend the money, don’t give them spendable money.

Give them crypto they can’t touch until retirement instead.

That would:

Keep his $2,000 promise,
Super-charge a constituency that already leans his way,
Avoid another round of stimmy-check inflation, and
Potentially claw back much of the cost through future tax revenues if those accounts grow.

If Trump really wants to be the “crypto president,” this is what that would look like in policy form—not just a photo-op at a Bitcoin conference, but a tariff-funded, time-locked crypto retirement account for every working American.