The U.S. Mint is marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks with a half-dollar coin bearing the date of the attacks encircled by the words “NEVER FORGET,” a tribute that led Breitbart’s weekly business digest to note a practical side benefit: nobody is likely to mistake it for a quarter.
That has historically been a problem with half-dollar and dollar coins, the outlet noted — consumers tend to confuse them with the far more common quarter. “As we approach the 25th anniversary of September 11, we honor the memory of those we lost and the courage of those who risked their lives to save their fellow Americans,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement quoted by Breitbart. “A quarter century later, our promise to the victims and their families remains the same: we will never forget.”
The coin was one of two currency-related stories to land in the same week. The other involved Hunter Biden, who launched a memecoin called $LAPTOP — a nod to the laptop that became a flashpoint in the 2020 election cycle.
A Token Meant to Flip the Script, and a Roughly 95 Percent Plunge
Hunter Biden framed the project as reclaiming a symbol. “The symbol they used to try to end me is now a symbol of resilience, redemption, and recovery,” he wrote on X, according to Breitbart’s account. The digest pushed back on that framing, arguing the laptop “wasn’t a symbol” but a real device, and that the more consequential disclosures concerned the broader Biden orbit rather than Hunter himself. The outlet also revisited the period when Twitter briefly restricted the New York Post’s account over its laptop reporting and blocked discussion of the story.
The coin itself did not live up to the rhetoric. Breitbart reported that $LAPTOP shed roughly 95 percent of its value within hours of launching.
Trump’s $5,000 Tariff ‘Dividend’ and a Doubling-Up of Inflation Complaints
The week’s biggest policy moment came at the GOP midterm convention, where President Trump pitched a plan to return tariff revenue to Americans as a $5,000-per-adult “dividend” if Republicans hold both chambers of Congress in the midterms.
Breitbart’s digest zeroed in on what it described as an inconsistency in the economic commentary surrounding the idea. For more than a year, the outlet wrote, prominent economists have argued that consumers ultimately bear the cost of the tariffs Trump announced on Liberation Day — even when those economists concede that importers cut the checks at the point of collection. If consumers are the ones paying, the digest reasoned, a rebate would simply hand the money back to its rightful recipients.
Instead, critics quickly warned the dividend would be inflationary. Breitbart framed that as a no-win setup: taking money out of consumers’ pockets through tariffs is allegedly inflationary, and putting money back in is allegedly inflationary too. “It’s almost as if the underlying principle is that whatever President Trump does will get called inflation,” the digest wrote.
The outlet’s own read is that tariffs function as a tax and therefore tend to be disinflationary in isolation — though the effect can be swamped once government spends the revenue. Depending on who absorbs the cost, Breitbart argued, tariffs either push prices down, dampen economic activity, or crowd out spending on non-tariffed goods. A dividend would probably be inflationary on its own, the digest allowed, but in the current environment it might mostly offset the drag from tariffs and elevated gasoline prices.
Cost was another sticking point. A universal $5,000 payout carries a price tag several times what the tariffs collect in a year — roughly $1.3 trillion for the dividend against about $300 billion in annual tariff revenue, according to estimates cited by Breitbart.
Bessent on AI, China and the Stakes of Technological Competition
Breitbart also held a policy event with Bessent in Washington, and the digest highlighted his remarks on artificial intelligence and China as a standout. Bessent described the AI race in existential terms, pointing to the scale of U.S. defense spending — including a $1.5 trillion defense budget and the Iron Dome — and warning that a Chinese lead in AI would render other advantages moot. “Beating China—there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this,” Bessent said, per the digest. “If they were to pull ahead on this, then nothing else matters.”
Consumer Sentiment Sinks — With Republicans Driving the Drop
Early September consumer sentiment fell to one of its lowest readings since before Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and Republicans accounted for much of the decline. GOP sentiment dropped to its lowest point since November 2024, erasing the optimism that followed Trump’s election. The economic outlook component among Republicans slid from 86.9 in August to 73.2 in September — the weakest since October 2024.
Breitbart’s interpretation: Republicans are anxious about the midterms and what a Democratic majority in one or both chambers could mean for the economy.
A 9/11 Reflection, Reprised
The digest closed by revisiting a piece the outlet’s author originally wrote for the New York Sun — the first published review of the film United 93. In that essay, the writer argued the 21st century effectively began not on September 11 broadly but aboard United Flight 93, when passengers learned via airphone calls that hijacked planes were being turned into weapons. “This is a suicide mission,” one passenger says in the film, and the review described how that realization converted fear into resolve without any need for mythmaking. The men aboard, the review stressed, did not intend to die and did not intend to be used as fodder for the terrorists’ plan.
As the country memorializes those killed in the attacks and the first responders who died trying to save them, the digest’s closing message was that September 11, 2001, should be remembered as more than the day terrorists struck — it was also the day Americans fought back and won. The digest also included a note asking readers to report any issues with commenting.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/11/breitbart-business-digest-dividends-coins-and-9-11/