The New Yorker:

Can the Administration retain public support for a trade policy that could force Americans to buy less stuff?

By John Cassidy

Nobody has ever accused Donald Trump of being an economic philosopher, but maybe we have been missing something. In a televised Cabinet meeting last Wednesday, the President brought up the possibility that his trade war, and particularly his punitive tariffs on Chinese goods, would create empty shelves at retailers. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dolls,” he said. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

Trump was trying to make the argument that the trade war would be less damaging to the U.S. than to China, which is facing a slump in factory orders. But his statement, which seemed to suggest that forcing Americans to consume less stuff for a while wouldn’t necessarily be a tragedy, attracted a great deal of attention. “skimp on the barbie,” a front-page headline in Thursday’s edition of the New York Post blared. The Guardian editors went with “No Ken Do.” To Greg Ahearn, the head of the Toy Association, an industry lobbying group, it was no laughing matter. Thanks to the tariffs, the industry is facing “a frozen supply chain that is putting Christmas at risk,” he told the Times. “If we don’t start production soon, there’s a high probability of a toy shortage this holiday season.” Despite this warning, Trump doubled down on his statements over the weekend, telling Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “I’m just saying [children] don’t need to have thirty dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have two hundred and fifty pencils. They can have five.”

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