Prof G Markets - Trump’s $2,000 Tariff Dividend Doesn’t Add Up — Here’s Why
Episode Date: November 12, 2025Ed Elson sits down with Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, to unpack President Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff dividend. Then, Alex Heath, author ...of The Verge’s Sources newsletter and co-host of the Decoder podcast, joins the show to break down the growing rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI, and their sharply different business strategies. Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Follow Scott on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Today's number 23.
That's how many kilograms of pasta the average Italian eats every year,
more than any other nationality.
We try to come up with a good joke about Italians,
but we can only do so much.
Money markets matter.
I'm Ed Elson. It is November 12th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals.
The Dow closed at a record high on continued optimism for an end to the shutdown.
The S&P also rose, however, the NASDAQ declined as NVIDIA dragged down the index.
Invidia shares fell 3% after SoftBank sold its entire stake in the company to fund their other AI efforts.
Meanwhile, the dollar slid after new ADP data indicated a slow,
labor market. And finally, AI infrastructure company CoreWeave dropped 16% after issuing weaker
than expected guidance for the year. Okay, what else is happening? A new twist in the tariff
story emerged this week, and that is the tariff dividend over the weekend. President Trump
proposed a $2,000 tariff dividend for all Americans except for high-income earners. He says the dividend
will be funded by the revenues that the tariffs bring in.
He also wrote on true social, quote,
people who are against tariffs are fools.
We are now the richest, most respected country in the world.
However, the White House has not released any plans on what this dividend will actually look like.
So, the tariff dividend, essentially the stimulus check of 2025.
Perhaps it'll happen.
Perhaps it won't happen.
It isn't clear how serious this proposal actually is.
But if it does happen, well, it will have pretty significant impacts on our economy and also our nation.
So to help us make sense of this proposal, we are speaking with Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
Professor Wolfers, thank you very much for joining us again on Profitue Markets.
Wait, if you call me Professor Wolfers, do I have to call you, Mr. Ed?
You do. That's the rule.
Okay, a horse is a horse, of course, of course. No one can talk to a horse, of course.
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous.
Mr. Ed.
Yep.
I was good to see you again.
We want to get your reactions to this $2,000 tariff dividend.
What do you make of this?
What are your thoughts?
Does this make sense?
Is this a swearing show or a no swearing show?
This is a swearing show.
Is swearing good for the soul or bad for the soul?
So, I'm going to give you a hot take.
I'm going to stay dear I've heard.
In my head, there was an expletive in between.
Okay, here's how this looks like on average.
Take money from Americans through tariffs, pull it in through the IRS,
send it over to the checkprinting department and send it out to Americans.
In the best possible scenario, we come out even.
The best thing we can do is not harm people.
Okay. In reality, is it a good idea for the government to take money with one hand and then just send it straight back out? Remember, on average, because there's going to be differences across people. No, I am so old, Ed, so very old, I remember when Republicans didn't like taxes. Their argument was, if you tax my income, then I'll work less hard. Every extra hour means less take home pay, less stuff.
The same thing, by the way, applies to a consumption tax.
If I work a certain number of hours, get the same amount of money, but now I can't afford
as much stuff, that's less of an incentive to work.
A tariff is a form of a consumption tax.
And so exactly the same logic that Republicans use to say we shouldn't tax income also
applies to taxing consumption and also applies to tariffs.
And so then the idea of pulling money in bearing all those economic costs,
that Republicans think we shouldn't bear unless absolutely necessary.
And then the only necessary thing that happens is we send the money straight back out.
And on average people come out exactly the same is absurd on its face.
Yeah.
So here's a thing.
If you want to reduce how much tariffs are hurting Americans,
I have this whole much simpler plan.
Don't levy the tariffs.
And then you haven't got this problem.
You've taken money from people and you have to give it back.
don't take it. Leave him with it.
So my response to that,
and of course I agree,
perhaps
the argument
and perhaps the argument that people are
kind of implicitly making their heads is
oh no, these tariffs,
we got the money from foreigners.
We got the money from China
and India and Brazil.
So we're transferring money
from these foreign nations and
putting it in the pockets of
Americans. I think you and I understand that's not what's happening, because as you say,
tariffs are a tax on consumption. It's a tax on Americans. It's a tax on the importers as well.
But it sounds as if that's maybe the implicit argument that by saying, oh, we're going to give the
money back to you, it implies that we got it from someone else. Is that what they're saying?
Why do we have to give it back to us? So you do know we have a national debt of quite some substantial
magnitude, one that the president promised would be over within eight years.
Right.
So, yes, even if that was true, which it's not, right?
It's not.
Can we be clear?
So let's end a crazy land where it's true that somehow China is sending us checks.
Why is it that the next step is that we have to send those checks straight on to American
households?
I don't think there's any logic to that.
So I have spent some amount of my day doing TV interviews on this.
And people keep asking, you're a serious economist, let me ask you a serious set of questions.
You just did it, Ed, because you're a wonderful guy, devastatingly handsome, and you want to get to the truth.
But if you want to get to the truth, don't ask me what the economic logic of this is, because there isn't any.
Yes.
So here's where the emperor's wearing no clothes, apart from everywhere, but the thing I want to focus on is there's a standard way you do economic policy.
You come up with an idea in a room, maybe in the White House, and then you ask your nerds to go off and crunch some numbers.
And then you think about the idea and you bring together people from the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisors and the Treasury chimes in, and there's a policy process, and you think about who wins and who loses, and you talk to the interest groups and the stakeholders and so on.
And then you've refined this policy, so it's so beautiful, it achieves exactly your goals, that you're so excited to unveil it to the American people that you don't just tweet about it at midnight.
You then release a 30-page background paper that explains the case and makes the argument and shows the mind.
And you go out there and you try and win the war of ideas.
You're excited because you've got something you really believe in, and you can't wait to show your work.
That's how it's worked every single day of my lifetime, except now.
So the real thing is, should you ask an economist to take seriously a policy that the White House hasn't taken seriously?
So here's the challenge.
To you, to me, to anyone, I'm a pretty good economist.
You're a pretty fantastic journalist.
You should be able to call the White House and say, can I see your work?
Right.
My son right now is 13 years old. He's upstairs right now. He's preparing for a middle school math exam. He has to show his work. My son, the stakes of whether he gets question five on his middle school math test correct, are far lower than the macroeconomics of a $2,000 rebate per person. My son is showing more of his work than the present. My son is more convinced that he has a useful answer to a question that's worth answering than the present.
And so I think we should all give up the pretense.
If they're not going to show their work, it's because they haven't done it.
And we should stop pretending that it's anything remotely serious.
It's populist nonsense.
This is no way to govern a country.
Sorry, you're fantastic.
And what happened was I just got the head of steam going because it drives me nuts.
How are you feeling?
Tell me about your feelings, Ed.
Well, I wanted to get to, why did he do this?
And I think you kind of hinted out there when you said populist nonsense.
It sounds like this is, I mean, we look at the approval ratings of Trump, and specifically
his tariff policy, which are low and going even lower.
People are putting, connecting the dots and realizing, okay, inflation's rising, my grocery
bills are going up.
And more people are realizing, okay, this is probably.
because we put a 20% tax on all the stuff that we bring in.
So I wonder if maybe this is just his kind of lazy way of winning back political approval,
getting people to like him, his free money.
Is that what this is all about?
One imagines.
So I think really the framing is going to be this is a tariff dividend.
My policy is doing so much that I can afford to send some of it back to you.
If that's the political signal, I want our audience to be very clear.
on what's happening here.
So this is just arithmetic, right?
At the moment, we're pulling in between 20 and 25 billion per month in tariff revenue.
So this is, he's planning on sending out 600 billion in checks.
So roughly speaking, we might pull in 250 or 300 billion in tariffs.
Now comes the easy question.
What's bigger?
600 billion.
I'm going to use hands to make this easy.
I'm sorry for those who are on audio.
Or 300 billion.
I'm going to go with $600 billion on this one.
So the president has said, I'm going to do this.
Look, and there might be other ways in which it's complicated.
He might decide to cut out the kids, so we're moving from $600 to $450 billion.
He might cut out more rich people who the hell knows.
But, you know, the point is he's getting $250 to $300 billion in tariff revenue,
and he wants to declare a dividend.
The dividend he's declared is more than all of it.
And he said not only is he going to declare a dividend, he's going to use the rest to pay down the national debt.
Yeah.
there's no rest. It's negative. The national debt's going up. So he is not even showing us the
respect of using numbers that are in the bullpark of truthful. Yeah. Hey, can I surprise you?
Please. There's something I love about this policy. What's that? So one thing I don't like about
tariffs is tariffs are aggressive because they're a tax on spending and poor people spend a larger
share of their income than do rich people. So what's terrible is he's saying, well,
let's pull in all this money that's in a regressive way. But guess what? He's talking about
giving it out as a flat $2,000 per, which is incredibly positive in terms of redistributing
towards working on middle class Americans. This is extremely progressive. So even though it's
a regressive tax, if he sends it out as a flat amount, working class Americans would come out
on top. I love that for him. And guess what? That's how I know it's not going to happen.
Yes. I am willing to bet you,
Ed, whatever
I don't even know what my annual salary is,
but whatever my salary is between November
11th and the end of the year,
I will bet that against your salary
between November 11th and the end of the year
that this will not happen.
Yeah. Which brings us probably to
Scott Besson's comments where he was asked about
this, he seemed to be
caught a little bit off guard.
And then he said, oh yeah,
it might happen, but it might happen
through tax cuts. And that
really was the tell
I think that this is not going to happen, and he's kind of just shit-posting.
All the money that goes out of this administration's already gone.
It went in the one big, beautiful bill, and it went to rich people and their tax cuts.
Exactly.
I have a question for you.
I know this is your show, Ed.
Can I ask you a question anyway?
Please.
How should we talk about nonsense?
I'm not being funny.
I mean, you're a totally serious economics commentator, and I'm a semi-serious one.
This thing's on the front page of the newspaper.
but the President of the United States said it out loud,
but he clearly hadn't even said anything to his Treasury Secretary.
Yes.
What do we do?
What is our role?
What truths can we tell?
How seriously should we take nonsense?
I mean, it's the president, but it's nonsense.
But sometimes he does nonsense.
Well, this is part of the problem, isn't it?
And that's why I appreciate you making jokes about it
because it deserves to be made fun of,
versus trying to come up with a very serious formal argument
as to why it doesn't make sense.
I mean, it's a joke of an argument to begin with.
So let's be comedic in our rebuttal.
So I like how you're talking about it.
I'll tell you that much.
I don't find it funny every day, man.
Yeah.
And I don't want to bring the mood down because I love having fun with you.
But, and it is funny.
Like, here's a weird thing that's happened to me.
People have come up to me recently say, hey, Justin, you're really funny.
I'll tell you a funny thing about me at, I'm not funny.
Stop laughing.
I'm not funny.
I've never cracked a joke on national television.
The only thing, including this, we can go back and look at the transcript.
I promise I didn't tell a joke.
The only thing that I've done is said out loud, it's happening.
And it turns out if you describe our reality, it's so absurd that people laugh.
That's right.
Stranger than fiction and funnier than fiction.
That's right.
What a world.
Well, Justin, we're due for a longer conversation very soon.
but we're going to have to let you go.
We appreciate you helping us make sense of this,
and how ridiculous this all is.
We appreciate your time.
Thank you.
You too.
After the break, a look at the rivalry
between Open AI and Anthropic.
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We're back with Profugee Markets.
New documents from OpenAI and Anthropic reveal the vastly different business approaches
of the two most valuable AI startups in the world.
According to reports obtained by the Wall Street Journal,
Sam Altman is pursuing an aggressive spending plan,
while Dario Amode is taking a far more cautious approach.
Anthropic is on track to break even by 2028,
while Open AI projects $74 billion in operating losses that same year,
about three quarters of its revenue.
The documents also show that Open AI expects to burn through 14 times as much cash as Anthropic
before making a profit in 2030.
So, for a deeper dive into this rivalry between Open AI and Anthropic,
We are speaking with Alex Heath, author of the Sources newsletter and co-host of the Access podcast.
Alex, good to see you again.
Good to see you, Ed.
We want to get your reactions to this new data that we learn from the Wall Street Journal.
They're really digging into how the Anthropic business really works.
And what we're really learning is Anthropic is reigning in the spending or at least planning to.
They intend to break even by 2028.
Total opposite of what we're saying.
seeing over at OpenAI. Let's just start with your initial reactions. I'm not surprised by this because
they're very different businesses. Anthropic is majority B2B enterprise, right? It's 80-ish percent of their
business. Open AI, on the other hand, is a massive consumer business where the vast majority of
open eyes users, and I feel like every time I come on, we talk about ads and chat GPT, but it really
does come down to this. The vast majority of Open AI's users are not making money for the company. They're
actually a cost suck, right? Because most people are using ChatsypT for free, whereas most of
Anthropics business is selling an API to companies that are buying its AI to power their products.
And also Anthropic is not doing a lot of the things that Open AI is. They're not doing
consumer hardware with Johnny Ive. They're doing nothing multimodal. They're doing nothing in audio,
really. Video generation, image generation. They're staying out of it. When you talk to people in
the industry, everyone understands that Anthropic.
is solely really focused on the coding market. It's the thing that they are winning at. Open AI
is certainly trying to nip at their heels, but there's just, there's tremendous opportunity in
coding by itself. I'm not trying to say that that's all Anthropic is doing, but certainly when you
look at the growth profile of the company, it's coding. It's Claude Code. It's the coding agents.
And Open Eye is just doing a lot more. And Altman, I think, wants to be seen as, you know,
the next multi-trillion-dollar multi-platform tech conglomerate, whereas you've just got more
focused with Anthropic and what they're doing. Yeah. Very interesting, also given what happened
last week where Sam Altman was asked by Brad Gersner, I don't know if you saw this about how he
was going to pay for the $1.5 trillion in spending, and he had this very frantic response,
which went viral. Scott and I talked about it. I'd love to get your reactions to how that unfolded
And what did you think of his response to that question?
Sam is good at the theatrics.
I know for a fact that he was not surprised by that question,
that that was a question that he'd been asked privately.
So I think there were some theatrics involved.
I don't really think he was being knee-jerk defensive,
as you could read into it.
I think it was a little bit of a kitsy thing.
That said, it's certainly, you know,
you could make the argument that it's not a good look for the CEO of the most important company
AI, maybe arguably the most important company in the world right now to react that way to a very
fair question from a large shareholder, which is how are you going to pay for all this? And saying,
you know, basically, trust me, bro, does not endear confidence when, you know, we're saying
all these deals that are not based on current revenue like you talk about on the show all the time.
So, in hindsight, I'm sure he wishes he could have said it a different way. I mean, I think he even
tweeted about that, that he, you know, you had multiple follow-up.
from him and Sarah Fryer in the last week or two,
which I think just shows how on pins and needles everyone is
about everything that comes out of Open AI's leadership's mouse.
Yeah. But then right after we saw these comments from Sarah Fryer
separately at this Wall Street Journal conference where she brought out
the word backstop, the federal backstop,
essentially saying, how do you pay for it?
You get the government to pay for it.
what did she make of that news?
I saw the walkback of that,
as I'm sure everyone else did.
If you go back and listen to that part of the interview,
it's not like a flub.
It's not like something that could be interpreted
as maybe she meant something else.
There was actually a moment where the interview
even pushed to clarify,
and she was like, yeah, yeah, like a backstop.
Like, I went back and watched it
because I was like,
was this just something you could infer?
I think it was a trial balloon.
You know, I'm not saying this is like reporting.
I have to back this up right now,
but it's a very, you know,
This is a thing companies do all the time is they trial balloon ideas.
And do I think Open Eye would love a government backstop if it could get one?
Sure.
Why wouldn't you?
It would certainly help with the funding they need to do.
I think the visceral reaction to that comment was maybe a sign to them that there's not an appetite there for that.
In related, opening eye news, SoftBank announced it is selling its remaining.
Invidio Stoke, almost $6 billion.
dollars. Supposedly the money's going to be used to fund AI efforts, likely open AI, an investment
in open AI or something of the sort. We also just wanted to get your reactions to that news,
which is really moving markets. I mean, Nvidia's down today, kind of bringing down the whole
market with it. Again, it's crazy how twitchy everyone is, right, to comments like these. I mean,
this is more than a comment, right, but that this stuff can move markets this way.
I mean, very cynically, the take could be that SoftBank is selling its Nvidia stake to fund companies whose main KAPX is buying Nvidia chips.
Also, like, you know, SoftBank Hata is going to have its most profitable year, I think, since, like, 2020.
And a lot of that has contributed from its Open AI investment, which it is riding the valuation for, helping to set by leading this massive round.
You've been talking about round tripping a lot on this show.
I'm not trying to suggest this is exactly round-shipping,
but there is a very circular nature to all of this.
I wouldn't necessarily look at this,
and I'm pretty sure the SoftBank executives were clear on their earnings call,
like that this is anything specific about Nvidia.
SoftBank is super levered everywhere.
It's like an octopus of leverage.
It's hard to keep track of everything they're doing
and how they're trying to finance everything.
And they're putting tens of billions in Open AI this year,
so they needed liquidity, and they were pretty confident about that.
I mean, Mossa famously, I don't know if you remember this, he got out of NVIDIA right before the Chachipit boom.
Right.
And had he held, that stake alone would be worth like over $200 billion.
So the timing of soft banks buying and selling, I don't think should necessarily set the broader market.
They also did rework.
I mean, you could point to a lot of great moves and a lot of bad moves.
I wouldn't say it's consistent one way or the other.
It's very erratic.
Yeah.
Well, it is funny. He used the money that he got from the Nvidia sale to buy shares
and we work. And now he's using the money from this, Nvidia sales to buy shares, perhaps
an open AI. And look, other people have been making that comparison. It's not me, but I'm not,
I'm not saying that is the right comparison to make. It is striking. My final question to you,
Alex, I saw you last week at your launch party for sources.
I had to leave on the earlier end.
How did it go?
Oh, man.
Poker was,
poker was very fun,
but I shouldn't comment how I ended.
Yeah,
we brought poker,
but I shouldn't comment on how I,
how I ended.
It could have been a lot worse,
but,
you know,
whatever,
it's a party.
Yeah,
that was my favorite part.
I walk in,
there is a room
that is dedicated to poker.
But,
yeah,
And I support it.
We'll have you at the next game.
Absolutely.
Love it.
Okay.
Alex Heath, author of the sources news center, co-host of the Access podcast.
Alex, always appreciate your time.
Thanks so much, Ed.
Well, we all know Anthropic.
We all know Claude, their chatbot.
But this is very interesting reporting from the Wall Street Journal
because it is giving us one of the first, very clear, side-by-side view.
of Anthropics business and Open AI's business.
We now know the differences,
not just in terms of what they're building in AI,
but how they are building in AI,
their R&D plans, their business strategy,
their spending plans.
And it really is a tale of two companies.
On the one hand, you have a company
that doesn't seem to care at all about spending,
that is Open AI.
And on the other hand,
a company that seems to care quite a lot,
a company that is on track to be profitable,
in just a couple of years, and that is significant, because up until this point, the assumption
in AI has been you have to spend obscene amounts of money. That is a given at this point,
but here we are, here we have an AI juggernaut that is massively successful, that is proven
its commercial value, that is growing very quickly, and that seems to have a far more
measured approach to spending. Yes, they're still spending a lot, but, and
Anthropic spending doesn't come even close to Open AI.
They're two very, very different approaches.
Now, up until this point, Open AI has been the winner.
$500 billion valuation, not only getting a lot of usage, but also telling a very exciting
story.
Open AI is the undisputed heavyweight champion of AI.
But, as we discussed on Monday, that narrative might be running out of steam.
The spending is getting out of control.
Sam Altman's having these public meltdowns on these podcasts, and investors are beginning to show
some signs of anxiety. And it's all coming to fruition this week, where we saw a big spike in
big tech bond yields. We're seeing the highest spread on these bonds since Liberation Day. Why?
Because investors are getting increasingly concerned about all of the spending on AI. We're also
seeing some weariness in the AI stocks. Invidia fell as much as 9% this week. Corwee fell more than
20% were seeing increased short interest in AI stocks, including, of course, Michael Burry's now
infamous short position on Nvidia and Palantir. And even outside of the stock market,
people are getting anxious. Look at Google search volume, for example, for AI bubble. That is up 10x
from six months ago. Jeff Bezos, David Solomon, Bill Gates, many other leaders are publicly
acknowledging that we are probably in a bubble. Put another way, the narrative on AI is beginning
to waver. And a trillion-dollar AI spending plan, it just isn't quite what it used to be. It doesn't
sound as sexy as it did, say, 12 months ago. And that may well mean pain for open AI, which has, of
course, been leading this charge. But more importantly, it might mean new opportunities,
opportunities for other companies that are taking a different approach,
companies that are raining in their spending,
companies that are getting their costs under control.
It might mean the beginning of the rise of a new heavyweight champion,
a new AI winner.
And when you look at these documents that the Wall Street Journal has just released,
it does look like that winner could well be anthropic.
Okay, that's it for today.
episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our research team is Dan Chalon, Isabella Kinsall,
Chris O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio, and our technical director is Drew Burroughs. Thank you for
listening to Profty Markets from Profit Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson.
I will see you tomorrow.
