President Donald Trump has allowed low- and middle-income Americans to receive dividends using money collected from US import tariffs.

Trump said these tariffs would bring “hundreds of billions of dollars” to the US treasury.

“There could be a distribution or a dividend to the people of our country. I would say for people that would be middle income people and lower income people, we could do a dividend,” the US president told reporters on Sunday.

On August 1, Trump signed an executive order imposing US import tariffs of 15% to 41% on more than 60 countries and the European Union. These tariffs will come into effect on Thursday. The highest tariffs have been imposed on Iraq (35%), Serbia (35%), Switzerland (39%), Laos (40%), Myanmar (40%), and Syria (41%).