Maybe it’s coming from economically illiterate advisers such as Peter Navarro. Or maybe it’s because President Donald Trump’s long-held opinions on trade were unleashed by the fact that he recently survived multiple assassination attempts and won a far more decisive victory this time around. Either way, the president’s rhetoric surrounding his trade war has devolved into tired, lazy, 20th-century socialist nonsense.
When pressed by Kristen Welker of Meet the Press on the possibility that there will be shortages in stores this year due to his erratic tariff policies, Trump gave perhaps the worst response imaginable.
“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump said. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls. … They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
Set aside for a moment the moral depravity of the most powerful man on the planet, who also happens to be a billionaire who has lived what can only be described as a comically lavish lifestyle for the entirety of his five decades in public life, telling middle-class people what their children can and cannot have for Christmas. This feeble attempt to obfuscate the problems with the administration’s trade policy simply will not work. It turns out that when you have bad ideas, such as initiating a global trade war for no reason, you end up sounding like others with equally bad ideas.
“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.” You could be forgiven for assuming this quote is attributed to the 47th president, but you would be wrong. Octogenarian Marxist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) came up with this gem during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Regardless of how many times Democrats have cited fact-free propaganda from the 2016 Clinton campaign, Trump is not, in fact, fluent in Russian. If he were, he may have simplified his talking point to the much cleaner, “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.” That’s Karl Marx, by the way.
He and his team may pretend otherwise, but Trump’s current posture will have political ramifications.
“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!), BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID,” the president posted on Truth Social in February.
The problem here is that while Trump may believe the price of his trade war is worth it, each individual voter will look at their bank account, their stock portfolio, and the gifts under the tree this December and decide for themselves whether or not they agree.
In an inept attempt to explain the president’s comments on dolls and pencils, Rep. David Joyce (R-OH) said, “The idea that the Christmas trade is already starting to slow down and there might be less around, I get it. I think the American people will understand that because the American people understand shared sacrifice.”
TRUMP’S AUSTERITY ARGUMENT ON TARIFFS MAY BE ‘DANGEROUS POLITICALLY’
Who are these patient, forgiving, self-sacrificing voters we keep hearing about from allies of the president? An estimated 13% of 2016 Trump voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama four years earlier, and leagues of those same voters swung back to Joe Biden in 2020, and so on.
The American electorate is a lot of things, but you would be a fool to throw around the word “magnanimous.” Assuming swing voters will forgive you for emptying shelves and crushing 401(k)s is about as stupid as taxing uninhabited islands and attempting to save the cesspool that is Hollywood. If Trump doesn’t stop, his trade war will nuke his presidency before it has a chance to get off the ground.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.