Trump makes dubious US$5,000 election pledge

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday pledged to send every US adult US$5,000 if Republicans retain control of the US House of Representatives and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.

With approximately 270 million US adults, the idea would cost about US$1.35 trillion, require congressional approval and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly US$1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.

It was not immediately clear how the US$5,000 payments would work or whether they would be legal. The White House did not respond to a message seeking details.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get US$5,000,” Trump said during the Republican’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

Within an hour, US Vice President J.D. Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy.

Vance suggested it could be paid for by US tariff revenues, although the sum of Trump’s promised payments would far exceed US tariff revenue even before the Supreme Court tossed much of the president’s tariff program last year.

The national debt last month topped US$40 trillion for the first time.

Trump has frequently lamented that, during the modern era, the president’s party almost always loses seats in the US Congress during the midterms, and he has looked for unorthodox ways to defy the trend, including this week’s convention.

“We’re going to change that,” Trump said. “There’s no reason for it.”

Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank in Washington, said Trump has no authority to send money to Americans without approval from Congress.

Companies pay dividends when there is a surplus, but the US is running US$2 trillion annual deficits and has US$40 trillion in debt, Goldwein added.

“The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,” he said. “We don’t have surpluses to give away.”

The move was reminiscent of billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to buy votes in last year’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, where he handed out million-dollar checks to voters to try to boost a candidate who ultimately lost.

Trump has discussed the possibility before, but has never tied it to his party’s electoral fortunes. Earlier this year, he proposed a US$2,000 dividend and said he did not think he needed approval from Congress.

Last year, Trump gave members of the military a US$1,776 check that he called a “warrior dividend.”

“I will get a bill ready so that we can get the Trump Dividend passed immediately after the November 3rd election,” US Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio wrote on X late on Wednesday. “Because Republicans (and America) will win!”

Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr on Tuesday hit out at China at an international forum after a memo asserting Beijing’s position over their longstanding maritime dispute was delivered to him while he was speaking on stage.
The unusual incident was captured on video at the Seoul Defense Dialogue as the secretary was responding to a question about “gray zone” coercion in the South China Sea. The video shows what appears to be a conference staffer placing it on the table next to him while speaking.
“I have a note here, I think this is from China,” he said, describing

Singapore’s air quality hit an unhealthy level yesterday, as haze from forest fires raging in Indonesia continued to spread across swathes of Southeast Asia. The city-state is currently one of the 10 most-polluted major cities in the world, coming in at third in IQAir’s ranking. Kuching, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo, was No. 1. A government taskforce has “activated haze response plans” for schools, workplaces and community centers, Singaporean Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu (傅海) said in a video message on Facebook.

Most people could continue essential daily activities, but the elderly or vulnerable should

PAINSTAKING PROCESS: Ice makers freeze water for up to 72 hours, replace tainted water with a fresh batch once freezing begins, and are constantly stirring In the historic Japanese city of Kanazawa, craftsmen painstakingly shape and slice blocks of ice destined to chill negronis in some of the world’s trendiest bars. The men work for Kuramoto Ice, a century-old company in Ishikawa on the Sea of Japan coast and one of dozens of Japanese firms producing ultra-clear, premium ice.

This luxury product, believed by those in the industry to melt more slowly than regular blocks, is a staple of Japan’s cocktail culture, but its popularity is also spilling over to bars abroad, from the US to Australia, who pay as much as ￥200 (US$1.28) per cube. Kuramoto Ice

COMMITMENT: China could view reduced US-Seoul exercises as an opportunity to reassert itself, but the US had reassured Manila of its resolve, the defense chief said China could see recent cuts to US-South Korean military exercises as an opportunity to reassert itself in the Indo-Pacific region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said yesterday, though he said Washington had assured Manila that its commitments to the Philippines remained unchanged.

Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the Seoul Defense Dialogue, Teodoro said there had been no reduction in US-Philippine military activities, and that bilateral and multilateral cooperation involving Manila continued to expand. US President Donald Trump’s decision last month to scale back military exercises with South Korea has prompted debate among security analysts over the credibility of US