The $2,000 Tariff Check Disaster No One Is Telling You About

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Everyone loves “free money” from Washington—until you look under the hood. Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff dividend check is being sold like a tax cut… but it’s not a tax cut at all. In fact, Republican senators know it would explode the national debt and signal that the economy is in deep trouble.
In this episode, we break down:
 • Why a tariff check is a giant red flag for the economy
 • How politicians use stimulus-style payouts to save their own reelection bids
 • Why you can’t “pay down the debt” when Congress refuses to balance a budget
 • What actually happens when Washington starts dumping cash on voters
 • And the truth about Trump’s tariff numbers vs. real tariff revenue (spoiler: nowhere near “trillions”)
If Washington is mailing out $2,000 checks, it means the economy has already hit the “break glass in case of emergency” stage. We’ve seen this movie before—Bush, Obama, COVID… all of it. And it never ends well.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Why you do not want a tariff check? First and
foremost Republicans and Republican senators are well aware that this
two thousand dollars tariff dividend check is not good. It
will add massively to our national debt. Again, I'm all

(00:42):
for tax cuts, but this is not a tax cut.
Trump wants to hand out las He says, like I said,
I don't know if he's gas lighting us. He wants
to hand out big checks to millions of American families
to help offset the higher cost of goods and do
in part to steeper tariffs on imports from around the world,

(01:05):
which completely contradicts this point. We've already gone over this
here on the program. Now politicians are thinking themselves, h
this could be this could come in handy for my
reelection bid. Yes, it could come in handy. We start
handing out money and I could go home to my

(01:26):
district and help take credit for this Senate majority leader
John Thune said he would like to see the revenues
collected from higher tariffs be used to pay down the
national debt, which has ballooned to thirty eight trillion dollars.
First Senator Thune center Thune knows this. We first have

(01:47):
to balance the budget. Okay, how do you pay down
debt when you're going further into debt? Can I give you, Washington, DC,
why you do not want a tariff check. If it
gets the point in time where they're handing out tariff checks,

(02:12):
our economy is most certainly gonna be in the toilet.
I'm just telling you that. It's again, it's a a
balloon that's been floated right now. It's kind of like
in case of bad economy, you know, break glass. In
case of bad economy, break glass, just dump cash on
the American people to goose the economy. Sound familiar. Oh yeah,

(02:38):
they did that during COVID again. I talked about this
on the program. I remember, uh listening to sports radio
in New York there, living in Long Island at the time,
and the commercials running on air. Oh, bring your similis

(03:00):
checked down to so and so jewelers and take advantage
of our Special Deal and all this bs and we
can even go back further. I've written about this. I
called it the Incumbent Protection Act. That was one of
the last things that George W. Bush did on his
way out the door leading to Barack Obama. At that

(03:22):
point time, Nancy Pelosi was basically running the country. Yeah,
Pelosi was basically running the country after she got put
in a Speaker of the House. All done, I mean
that was you remember that massive Republican wipeout in two thousand

(03:45):
and six. I I'm Bush. He was so beaten out
back in two thousand and six. I remember him giving
the speech, you know, praising Pelosi and her family and
all this stuff while giving her the gavel. Yeah. Anyway, Yeah,
you do not want a stimulus check, because if you're

(04:08):
getting a stimulus check, bad stuff is happening here in
our country. A little bit more on the tariffs, just
because a politician, well, you may automatically assume if a politician,
I don't care, if it's a donkey, I don't care
if it's an elephant. If their mouth is moving, okay,
they're more than likely lying to you, don't I don't

(04:34):
know where Donald Trump gets his numbers from I'm sure
he has people feed him all sorts of lines of
bull but we have not taken in trillions of dollars
in tariff revenue. Just hasn't happened. Okay, trillions of dollars
haven't come in. So far this year, it's been one

(04:55):
hundred and ninety five billion dollars in total total tariff
revenue has been one hundred and ninety five billion dollars.
One hundred and seventeen billion of that are his new
tariffs that have been added on. Those are the numbers. Okay,

(05:16):
if you don't believe me, look it up. The other number. Yeah, yesterday,
Scott Bessent, being interviewed by Bret bhar Scott says the
President is comfortable saying comfortable saying, uh, you know, twenty
trillion dollars in new investments coming into the United States
from all of these countries. You had yesterday, Saudi Arabia, Oh,

(05:41):
it was six hundred billion. Now it's a trillion Saudi GDP. Again,
the entire GDP of Saudi Arabia is about a trillion bucks. Okay,
that's what it is. Granted, I'm sure they got money
of capital sitting on the sidelines, and again you know

(06:03):
they have no probable investing money, but they've been investing
money in the United States for a very long period
of time. My father in law used to work for
the Saudis when they own the prop Plaza hotel in
New York City. Take a look at all these apartments
that are bought up in many of these Skyrise buildings
in New York and Miami and other places. They're empty

(06:26):
most of the time. They just part cash into these
pieces of real estate. All of this, This twenty trillion
dollar number, Okay, they are promises. Okay, there's been no
letter of intent. They haven't signed on the dotted line.

(06:47):
These are not countries planning on taking taxpayer money and
investing in the United States. These are private companies from
around the globe that may or may not invest in
the United States. And you're gonna get them to invest anyway.
As long as you again, keep energy costs slow here

(07:10):
in the United States, it's a good environment for doing business.
You'll attract businesses automatically. That's always been the case. So
that twenty trillion dollar number people, Okay, it's it's a
bit of a pipe dream. If you will but anyway, anyway,

(07:30):
I'm just marking my words. Okay, you're getting a two
thousand dollars Trump tariff check. It's gonna be ugly out there.
Watchdog on Wall Street dot com