Josh Hawley Says Trump Tariff Rebate Checks Won't Go to 'Biden Voters'

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) recently introduced legislation that he claims is designed to allow Americans to “benefit” from Trump’s tariff scheme. Now, he’s giving everyone good reason to believe that his ploy to send rebate checks at a time of rising inflation is just a political stunt.

The administration’s tariffs are unprecedented in modern economic history and are currently generating revenue for the U.S. government by taxing U.S. businesses on their imports. Critics have noted that the administration is just asking many companies to pass along the higher cost of doing business to consumers. No matter what Trump says, there’s just no avoiding the fact that tariffs will drive up the cost of electronics, including video games, laptops, graphics cards, cars, smartphones, and practically every other imported good.

To allow everyday people to “benefit” from this bizarre system, Hawley has proposed sending a $600 rebate to Americans, in a fashion somewhat similar to the Covid-era stimulus checks that came with the CARES Act. Hawley previously said that his legislation “would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.” However, it would appear that he was only talking about hard-working Americans who agree with Donald Trump.

In an interview with Trump acolyte Steve Bannon, Hawley claimed that his legislation was only designed to send money to people of a particular economic and political persuasion. “Well, you wouldn’t give it to everybody, you’d give it to the working people,” the Senator told Bannon on Tuesday. “You’d give it to our people.” Who counts as “our people”? From Hawley’s comments, it doesn’t exactly sound like a representative sample of the country.

“I mean, you know, the rich people don’t need it … what I mean by that is all those Democrat donors of Wall Street, all these hedge fund guys, who all hate the tariffs, by the way,” Hawley said. “My view is, we ought to give a portion [of] that back to our working-class blue-collar voters who powered the Trump revolution, who got this president into office multiple times, and who are the backbone of this nation.”

During his conversation with Bannon, Hawley provided other vague details about his supposed plan. “It’d be $600 for every adult and child, so if you’ve got a big family, you’re gonna get more,” he claimed. “And you’d phase it out for income, you know? So again, the wealthy—you start making six figures, you get into the big six figures—you’d phase the thing out.” He continued: “So this is not going to the hedge fund managers or all the Biden voters. This is not going to the Wall Street kingpins. So they don’t need any of it.”

It’s worth noting that some 81 million people voted for Biden during the 2020 presidential election. Nearly 75 million voted for Kamala Harris last year. The number of people who make six-figures in this country is significantly smaller, but still represents a significant chunk of the population pie. In other words, it sounds like the target demographic for Hawley’s rebate program is actually quite small, and would mostly be: MAGA. Surprise, surprise.

Of course, it seems more than likely that the rebates won’t ever materialize, which means that nobody is going to be getting any money and Hawley is just engaging in a bit of theater to seem like he’s doing something to alleviate the harms of rising prices. If that’s the case, it’s just one more example of the MAGA brand of faux-populism—a largely rhetorical program in which economic elites lambaste their own class while sucking up to the poor. Meanwhile, Washington continues with business as usual, the rich get richer, and we’re all just a little bit more confused by what our leaders are doing.