What Trump’s Win Means for Dividend Stock Investors

As investors think about the potential impact of Donald Trump’s win over Kamala Harris, they shouldn’t forget about dividends.

For starters, a second Trump term means something won’t happen. Democratic nominee Harris proposed quadrupling the stock buyback tax to 4% from the 1% President Joe Biden enacted in 2022. In economic terms, you tend to get less off what you tax, so a new levy would have crimped stock buybacks. But it doesn’t seem to have happened. S&P 500 ( companies bought back some $860 billion in stock in 2021, spending about 50% of free cash flow on share buybacks. Over the past 12 months, companies repurchased another $960 billion in stock, about 65% of free cash flow.

That’s good news for investors who focus on cash returned to shareholders.

The bigger impact on dividend payers comes through Trump tax policy. He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21%, boosting net income margins. Tax rates might seem like a tertiary concern for income investors, but dividends are paid out of after-tax income, so the lower the taxes, the more cash can be paid out.

Some math: Dividend payers in the S&P 500 ( typically pay out about 40% of net income as dividends. A six-percentage-point rate cut has the potential to boost income, and payouts, by roughly 7% to 8%, all else being equal. There are some caveats with the Trump tax plan, the biggest being that the 15% rate would only be applied to domestic production.

So the biggest bump from the Trump tax plan goes to companies with larger U.S. businesses, which means focusing on how much money companies make in the U.S., says accounting expert Robert Willens. That typically means small-cap stocks. Companies in the small Russell 2000 generate roughly 90% of their sales in North America, according to Bloomberg, compared with about two-thirds for those in the S&P 500.

Small-cap stocks with attractive dividend yields should be poised to outperform. Three that fit the bill, with above-average yield and support from Wall Street analysts, include retailer Camping World (CWH and energy companies Crescent Energy (CRGY and Kodiak Gas Services (KGS . They yield an average of 3.5%. The three stocks gained an average of almost 6% on Wednesday after the Associated Press called the election for Trump

Investors don’t have to sift through the thousands of small-cap stocks in the U.S. There are several small-cap dividend-focused exchange-traded funds, including WisdomTree U.S. SmallCap Dividend (ticker: DES ) and ALPS O’Shares U.S. Small Cap Quality Dividend (OUSM ). Those ETFs currently yield about 2.6% and 1.3%, respectively.

Investors don’t have to go small. Large-cap companies might not benefit as much, but they’ll still benefit. Shares in the S&P 500 ( with above-average U.S. exposure and higher-than-average dividend yields include retailers Dollar General (DG and Target (TGT , food companies J.M. Smucker (SJM , Conagra Brands (CAG , and General Mills (GIS , distributor Sysco (SYY , cleaning products company Clorox (CLX , and Starbucks (SBUX .

That group yields about 3.2% on average and is concentrated in the retail and staples industries. Some manufacturing companies with a lot of domestic production include Caterpillar (CAT , Deere (DE , and Boeing (BA . Cat and Deere, however, have below-average dividend yields, and Boeing stopped dividend payments in 2020. Ford Motor stock (F , however, yields north of 5% and management paid an additional special dividend in 2023 and 2024, though Ford could also be hit by Trump’s tariffs and electric-vehicle policies.

Precisely calibrating all the variables isn’t easy, but lower tax rates for domestic producers will help small-cap companies and their dividends—and that’s enough.