President Trump is doling out cash and scrambling to lower fuel prices, hoping the last-ditch moves will mollify midterm voters tired of high costs and war-related headaches.
Mr. Trump has authorized dividend checks to troops, Medicare enrollees and certain Obamacare customers, and he is promising $5,000 to every adult citizen if Republicans retain their congressional majorities.
He is going all-out on diesel, hoping to blunt shortages from the wars in Iran and Ukraine by authorizing the sale of red-dye fuel for road vehicles and touting a controversial deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin for hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian fuel.
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Mr. Trump is pushing these eleventh-hour actions to energize voters without help from Congress. Lawmakers left Washington until the midterm elections, leaving him to find quick fixes to affordability concerns at the heart of the Nov. 3 elections that will determine control of Congress.
The president and congressional Republicans will have a hard time using cash to overcome “deeply implanted” concerns about the Middle East conflict, energy prices and perceived “excesses” of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carrying out sweeping deportation orders, said Ross Baker, a politics professor at Rutgers University.
“You can’t stop a glacier with a flamethrower,” Mr. Baker said. “It’s not only the president who is saddled with these problems, but also his party in Congress.”
Polling shows little enthusiasm for Mr. Trump’s plans, meaning they might not sway votes.
More than 6 in 10, or 63%, rejected the dividend proposal in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, including 9 in 10 Democrats and 4 in 10 Republicans.
A Marquette Law School poll found 70% opposed the $5,000 checks, while 29% supported them.
An Economist/YouGov poll was more evenly divided, with 43% supporting it and 45% opposing it. However, only 21% thought Mr. Trump would “definitely” or “probably” follow through on the payments, while 57% doubted he would keep his pledge.
A survey by McLaughlin and Associates, a conservative pollster that works for Mr. Trump, found that 52% of likely voters approve of the $5,000 checks, while 39% oppose them. Eight in 10 Republicans like the idea, while only 33% of Democrats approve of it, and independents are split: 43% approve and 46% disapprove.
Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, said Mr. Trump is trying to “stem the bleeding” with his rebates as the Republican Party faces a tough cycle, especially in the House.
Yet he said Mr. Trump is also trying to give voters something tangible to combat a perception challenge around the economy.
Americans have a price hangover from rampant inflation during the Biden administration. Those prices are not going down, but Mr. Trump can stabilize the rate of increase while handing out cash to give Americans something real and obvious.
“He’s trying to come up with some deliverables,” Mr. O’Connell said. “Essentially, that’s what people need to see.”
Voters are citing high costs as their primary concern this cycle, so Mr. Trump is trying to put money into their pockets while highlighting the long-term effects of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended tax cuts and eliminated taxes on tipped income. He also says that foreign investment under his tariff agenda will create jobs.
Inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, so central bankers raised interest rates in September. Mortgage rates are at their highest levels since November 2023.
Fears about the national debt are driving up Treasury yields, as bondholders demand a premium for holding government debt.
Some economists warn that Mr. Trump’s attempt to ease pocketbook headaches with government checks will exacerbate deficits.
“Trump’s most recent proposals are, for now, nothing more than theatrics, but if delivered on, they are potentially dangerous to the extent that they lead to more fiscal malfeasance,” said Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Mr. Trump is not shying away from his send-’em-checks proposals. He knows that a sitting president’s party typically struggles in the midterms, so he is looking for ways to buck the trend.
“Nobody’s done what I’ve done, nobody, not even close. But no matter how good they seem to be, they’re at a big disadvantage,” Mr. Trump told White House reporters Tuesday.
He posted a video on social media Monday promising the $5,000 checks, saying the cash will flow if Republicans win the House and Senate, but not if Democrats take control of either chamber.
“The only caveat on the Trump dividend is that you have to spend the money in the United States of America, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Trump told supporters Monday in Youngstown, Ohio. “Gets re-circled, gets recycled.”
Mr. Trump has also been touting the $1,776 “Warrior Dividend” payment issued to more than 1.4 million U.S. military service members in December, citing it as evidence of his commitment to the troops ahead of the midterms.
He is sending $500 checks to nearly 1 million Obamacare customers in 30 states. The checks went to people who did not receive federal subsidies under the program and faced higher premiums because of Obamacare user fees that fund the federal insurance exchange.
“There’s another message here. His point is [Democrats have] been bilking you on their policies,” Mr. O’Connell said.
Further, Mr. Trump sent one-time $90 payments to more than 20 million Medicare enrollees to offset Part B premiums.
Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, called the Medicare checks a bribe.
“This is another desperate attempt by a failed president to escape Americans’ revulsion with his failed agenda, amounting to one tank of Trump-inflated gas,” Mr. Wyden said.
His tank-of-gas comparison hit Mr. Trump where it hurts.
Mr. Trump boasted for years about low gas costs under his administrations. Yet his war on Iran led to energy shortfalls and higher gasoline and diesel prices, forcing him to pry loose more supply for global markets.
He is using a naval blockade in the Middle East to ferry out more oil, leveraging quasi-control of Venezuela to tap into crude reserves and touting Mr. Putin’s decision to export diesel despite earlier restrictions from Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries.
Lawmakers in both parties said the Russia deal undercuts a recent law, named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, that would place tariffs on nations that buy Russian fuel and fund their war machine.
“I oppose President Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on the purchase of diesel from Russia,” Sen. Susan M. Collins, a Maine Republican who faces reelection, said on social media. “I was a co-sponsor of the Russian sanctions law, which the President recently signed but is now not following.”
Mr. Trump said the outrage is selective, pointing to European Union purchases of Russian gas that totaled nearly $250 billion since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
He defended the deal Tuesday as a way to reduce prices globally.
“That’s not being released to us. That’s a diesel deal that’s going to be released into the world,” Mr. Trump told White House reporters as he departed for Alaska.
Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in economics at the Pacific Research Institute, said Mr. Trump is trying to undo damage from his own policies, including tariffs and an overseas war, and recent moves “will not move the needle in terms of fuel costs or inflation.”
“The potential increase in diesel supply from the agreement with Russia is not meaningful,” he said. “The financial support to Russia risks prolonging the conflict, and therefore price volatility, which works against the stated goal.”
Diesel prices are slowly receding from a record high of $6.53 per gallon on Sept. 21. However, the average price stood at $6.30 on Wednesday, far higher than $3.72 at this time last year.
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