Trump’s Anti-Abundance Agenda

National Review Online

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

 

When Americans were experiencing inflation and shortages during the Biden presidency, there was an internet meme going around that juxtaposed a paltry egg with the iconic 2019 image of a grinning Donald Trump, welcoming the national championship–winning Clemson Tigers to the White House, spreading his arms to display a massive bounty of burgers piled in front of him. The underlying message behind that joke became a central part of the 2024 campaign: Under Trump, Americans had plenty; under Biden-Harris, they had less.

 

Yet bizarrely, the man who for decades has been a symbol of unapologetic American excess is now defending his tariff policies by making a case against abundance.

 

When confronted with the reality that, should his tariffs go fully into effect, Americans will no longer have access to low-priced goods that are currently being imported, Trump is now arguing that children are going to have to get used to having less.

 

Last week, Trump said at his cabinet meeting, “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

 

Asked about it on NBC’s Meet the Press, he reiterated the talking point, saying, “They don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

 

While there are no doubt parents who sympathize with the idea that kids don’t need more plastic junk from China, there is no reason why the president should be telling parents what their kids do and do not need. Beyond that, the central justification for Trump’s tariffs has been the populist argument that free trade only benefits wealthy Wall Streeters at the expense of lower-income Americans. But it isn’t the super rich who will have problems buying things for their children under Trump’s tariff regime, but rather families who rely on access to cheaper goods to be able to afford any sort of toys (or other goods) for their children.

 

It’s hard to think of a greater gift to Democrats during a chaotic and expensive Christmas shopping season than footage of Trump (who never faced the prospect as either a child or a parent of having to make do with less) yammering about American children being spoiled.

 

It would be one thing if there were reason to believe that the short-term sacrifices Trump is asking of the American public were accompanied by a plausible path toward a payoff somewhere in the near future. This was the case with the economic downturn during the early part of Ronald Reagan’s first term, when the combination of tight monetary policy and tax cuts took time to take effect and create the conditions for a boom that began two years later. But unless Trump backs off or his unilateral assumption of tariff power is blocked by Congress or the courts, Americans will suffer real pain — and building factories and manufacturing capacity is not something that can be accomplished in a few months or even a few years.

 

Whether it was Jimmy Carter calling for national sacrifice in his “malaise” speech, or former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki mocking people who might have their Peloton deliveries delayed by supply chain disruptions, dismissing the legitimate economic concerns of American consumers has never been a winning political strategy.