Vice President JD Vance has his own particularly bad explanation for Donald Trump’s already ridiculous way of dismissing the rising prices of consumer goods.
In an interview on Fox News Thursday, host Martha MacCallum asked Vance what he thought about the president’s strange warning that American children might need to only have two dolls, instead of 30, in the face of his sweeping reciprocal tariff policy.
“Do you tell the people of this country that you need to make some sacrifices in order to reorganize this bad trade relationship?” MacCallum asked.
“Well, I think the president’s point here is that yeah, we do need to become more self-reliant, and that’s not gonna happen overnight, and it’s not always gonna be easy, Martha,” Vance replied.
“But what I’d ask people is not whether they want two dolls, or five dolls, or 20 dolls for their kids, I’d ask American moms and dads, ‘Would you like to be able to go into a pharmacy and know that the drugs your kids need are actually available to you as an American parent?’” Vance continued.
“‘Would you like to—god forbid—if your country goes to a war, and your son or daughter are sent off to fight, would you like to know that the weapons that they have are good American-made stuff, not made by a foreign adversary?’” he said.
But Vance’s weird pivot to fearmongering about war legitimately makes no sense. America is already the world’s largest arms exporter, accounting for a whopping 43 percent of global weapons exports between 2020 and 2024, according to CNN. Trump’s past efforts to invest in weapons production benefitted defense contractors more than soldiers.
As for Vance’s remark about pharmacies, it’s not evident that Trump’s tariffs will actually help increase access to drugs. Trump has said that he plans to make a decision on pharmaceutical tariffs within the next two weeks, but the Trump administration’s efforts to boost the domestic manufacturing of medicines may come at a cost to the people who need them, while U.S. manufacturing struggles to meet demand. Ahead of Trump’s announcement, imports of pharmaceuticals have seen a significant spike.
One by one, different members of the Trump administration have attempted to make sense of the president’s weird “dolls” comment. White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller argued that Trump wanted a higher degree of quality for American made goods, while in the same breath promised that the president would strip the very regulations that ensure that quality in an effort to make production less expensive. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted that a little pain now would lead little girls to a “better life,” while sidestepping concerns that economic damage Trump was threatening now could last generations.
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