Trump made headlines this week for going all Marie Kondo on the American economy—and I am here for it. During an interview with Meet the Press’s Kristin Welker, Trump answered a question about rising prices due to his tariffs on China by declaring his aversion to the excesses of American-style capitalism: “I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl—that’s 11 years old—needs to have 30 dolls,” said the President, before continuing later in the interview, “They can have three.”
In that same interview, he also stated that the nation’s rates of pencil ownership have gotten out of control: “They don’t need to have 250 pencils,” he decreed of the sick stationery addicts among us. “They can have five.”
Exactly right! Families across the nation going broke trying to keep up with the latest pencil innovations. Our strategic graphite reserves at an all-time low. Finally, an American president has the courage to stand up to those bastards at Dixon-Ticonderoga.
Is it surprising that the President of the United States is now dictating how many dolls, crayons, vaccines or eggs children need? Sure, a little bit. But why should it be? Many of the world’s great leaders have advocated for a centrally planned command economy—Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung come to mind.
And funnily enough, I’ve been making the argument that we waste too much money on cheap plastic crap from China to my wife for years, especially at Christmas when the kids were young. “A Grinch,” she used to call me, a charge I have never denied. So I’m delighted to discover that the First Family hates Christmas as much as I do, although maybe I should have guessed as much during the first Trump administration when Melania apparently took her seasonal decorating theme from The Shining.
Speaking of which, I was also heartened to see Trump’s intention to impose 100% tariffs on foreign films. Why do we need to shoot films abroad when we’ve already got the entire world built to scale in Las Vegas? And why stop there either? I’d also like to see a 100% tariff on subtitles and on elevator music that sounds a little too ‘ethnic.’
Economists are warning that the significant impacts of Trump’s economic policies should hit our shores this week, as the first Chinese ships to leave port following the imposition of the tariffs begin arriving in the U.S. Speaking with CNN, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said that “cargo coming into Los Angeles will be down 35% compared for a year ago.”
Fewer shipping containers means less work for dockworkers, fewer hauls for truckers, fewer products for sale. Will shortages follow? Some economists think so, with consumers likely to experience scarcity and/or price hikes in toys, footwear, glassware, cutlery, furniture, bedding and clothing—as are U.S. companies that rely on China for plastic, iron, steel and electronic components.
One has to wonder whether Trump’s message of austerity will fly among his own base. Republican orthodoxy has always been “buy, buy, buy!” Following 9/11, for example, George W. Bush’s message to the nation was, in effect, “Go shopping.” After any one of our nation’s frequent mass shootings, Republicans respond to calls for gun control by saying it isn’t a matter of needing to own more guns, but of having the right to own as many as we, the people choose. How many guns do Americans get, Mr. President? Is it more or less than the number of pencils?
We are told that any pain caused by these tariffs is likely to be short-lived. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reassured investors at the Milken Institute this week, claiming that, “the result of the president’s economic plan will be more. More jobs, more homes, more growth, more factories, more critical manufacturing plants, more semiconductors, more energy, more opportunity, more defense, more economic security, more innovation.”
That may end up being the case, although it’s hard to see where all the new jobs are coming from, or the wood to build all those new homes. It’s difficult to envision factories springing up across the heartland paying American wages to American workers. It’s difficult to see how cutting ourselves from the world will lead to more opportunity.
But while it’s tough to see how destroying our trade relationships creates more economic security (or national security) rather than less, I do agree with the Treasury Secretary that we are likely to see more innovation. After all, nothing inspires creativity like empty shelves.
The post Opinion: Trump’s Grinchy Tariffs Will Cancel Way More Than Just Christmas appeared first on The Daily Beast.
