The Republican Party is looking down the barrel of a potentially catastrophic midterm wipeout, and Donald Trump is up to his usual tricks: dishonest promises of future bribes. At the recent Republican Party convention-type proceeding, he promised that should the American people vote in a Republican Congress, they would give every adult U.S. citizen—all roughly 260 million of them—$5,000.
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As an initial matter, this is arguably illegal. In contrast to a politician promising to implement some policy should they be elected—a policy Republicans could implement right now, since they control Congress and the White House—Trump is saying he will cut a fat check to voters if and only if they vote how he wants. I’d call that a promised expenditure to influence voting if I’ve ever seen one.
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But perhaps we’re overthinking this promise, because it is manifestly not going to happen. Not only has the president already suggested large payments to Americans on 15 different occasions since taking office in 2025 (by Groundwork Collaborative’s count) without any follow-through, but breaking vows to pay someone is practically Donald Trump’s life’s work, the only thing he holds sacred. In any case, it would cost about $1.3 trillion, or about a quarter of the entire federal government budget, something no Republican Congress is going to support.
But let’s break with reality and suppose that Trump actually follows through on a promised payment for the first time in his life. There’s another problem: Trump’s second term has already been such an epic disaster that he is virtually guaranteed to have cost the average American more than $5,000. The Trump check that isn’t coming wouldn’t even get us back to square one. It probably wouldn’t even get you halfway.
Let me start with Trump’s madcap war on Iran. As I have suspected from the war’s earliest days, he has been totally unable to negotiate an end to the conflict. We’ve been stuck in a cycle of Trump loudly lying that a deal is imminent to juice the markets (and allow someone with administration connections to make huge profits by insider trading), the deal falling through, and a resumption of shooting. Now The Wall Street Journal reports that, contrary to the president’s claim that the war will end “immediately” after the midterms, his top advisers are starting to face the strong possibility that the war will continue until the end of his term. And that’s a strong bet. If I were Iran, I would do to Trump the exact same thing I did to President Carter in 1980.
The war has substantially increased the cost of oil; refined fuels are up even more. Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab has set up an Iran war cost tracker for gas and diesel, which estimates that the war has cost the American people $103 billion in higher fuels costs at time of writing, or roughly $500 million per day on average.
Predicting that daily figure will hold until January 20, 2029, is arguably optimistic at this point. Oil recently soared past $105 per barrel at time of writing, and diesel has cracked $6 per gallon nationally, a new record. In parts of California, diesel has reached $9.999—the highest price most stations can display, at least for the moment. Further increases are quite possible. China might restart its imports, which it has hitherto cut drastically for unclear reasons. Iran might decide to cut off what little is getting through the Strait of Hormuz.
Indeed, just before the drafting of this article, Iran-backed Houthi forces seized control of the port of Mocha, just a few miles north of the Red Sea side of the Bab-al-Mandeb strait. If they close off that ocean passageway, then Saudi Arabia will no longer be able to export to Asia through its pipeline to the port at Yanbu, erasing another four to five million barrels per day in production. While all this damage may permanently lower oil demand as the world seeks other power solutions, that process to the energy future is sure to be slow and grinding and painful, especially given Trump’s affinity for Big Oil.
So let’s be conservative and say Americans will be paying $600 million per day in additional fuel costs through the rest of Trump’s term, for a total of about $620 billion.
Then there is the direct military cost. The military is burning through much of its stockpile of precision-guided munitions and interceptors, which typically take weeks or months of time and millions of dollars to produce. Many advanced fighters, bombers, drones, and surveillance planes have been destroyed. Most of the bases around the Persian Gulf have been heavily damaged if not abandoned outright. The Navy is being run ragged, with stir-crazy and underfed sailors attempting to hurl themselves into the sea and ships coming back dripping with rust. Likely hundreds of billions in rearmament, repairs, and refitting are already locked in.
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Back in April, budget expert Linda Bilmes told the Harvard Kennedy School that the war is costing $2 billion a day. That may end up being an overestimate in terms of munitions simply because the military will run out of all its top-end stuff before Trump’s term is up, and American destroyers will have to be fitted with trebuchets. On the other hand, all that will presumably need to be replaced, and we’re also locking in hundreds of billions in VA spending due to all the injured troops.
So let’s be conservative again and say the average cost will be $1.5 billion per day on average through the rest of Trump’s term, for a total of $1.5 trillion in military costs, or a running total of $2.12 trillion. We’ve already blown past Trump’s phantom $5,000 payments by about $3,000.
But wait, I haven’t counted the tariffs! The Tax Foundation estimates that Trump’s tariffs cost the American people about $130 billion last year and will cost another $100 billion this year. Let’s call it another $200 billion for the last two years of his term, for a total tariff cost of $430 billion, and a running total of $2.55 trillion.
Then there are interest costs. Interest rates are high, as are government interest payments—currently running at $1.2 trillion per year, or more than the entire defense budget. Economist Paul Krugman argues that the high rates are principally driven by the enormous AI build-out, but surely Trump’s huge tax cut for the rich driving more government borrowing, and the way in which his price-increasing tariffs have helped prevent the Federal Reserve from cutting rates, have had some effect. So let’s tack on another $112 billion per year, for a nice round total of $3 trillion. That’s about $11,500 per adult U.S. citizen flushed straight down Trump’s golden toilet.
That’s before you get to the impact of the cost of money on American pocketbooks, in the form of higher interest rates for mortgages and cars and private loans. This is probably good for another few hundred billion over Trump’s four-year reign.
I’ll admit this is on the rough side even for a napkin-sketch estimate. But there are many other factors I haven’t considered. There is how high diesel costs will get passed on to anyone who buys shipped goods. There are higher electricity costs thanks to Trump canceling so many renewable-energy projects. There is lower growth because of his idiotic tariffs and associated uncertainty.
Much worse possibilities could be imagined. Iran could take out an aircraft carrier, or the war could tip the economy into a recession, or Trump might start another shooting war with Europe over Greenland.
The point is that a $5,000 check wouldn’t cover the damage every adult has felt. Just the direct costs of energy and tariffs and interest rates are well over $1 trillion, and then there are the federal debt service and budget costs that will eventually show up as either higher taxes or reduced social spending.
Whatever happens, I hope the voters that broke for Trump in 2024 because they were outraged at higher prices are satisfied with how things are going.