President Donald Trump is reviving his push for Americans to ration their way to greatness.
During a Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday evening, Trump brought up his belief that children are okay with owning fewer dolls. It’s a continuation of an identical sentiment he shared this spring: The cost of winning trade wars dictates a need for sacrifice and belt-tightening among Americans.
"You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls," he said. "So, we’re doing things right."
He also talked about making do with fewer pencils on hand. Forget owning as much as 37 pencils, he said. "They only need 1 or 2."
On the doll rationing front, that’s the last thing that U.S. toymakers w…
President Donald Trump is reviving his push for Americans to ration their way to greatness.
During a Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday evening, Trump brought up his belief that children are okay with owning fewer dolls. It’s a continuation of an identical sentiment he shared this spring: The cost of winning trade wars dictates a need for sacrifice and belt-tightening among Americans.
"You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls," he said. "So, we’re doing things right."
He also talked about making do with fewer pencils on hand. Forget owning as much as 37 pencils, he said. "They only need 1 or 2."
On the doll rationing front, that’s the last thing that U.S. toymakers want to hear. For Joann Cartiglia, owner of Queen’s Treasures, an antique doll store based in upstate New York, the comments landed with a thud.
"What Trump is doing is making affordable products — that the average Americans enjoyed spending money on — so expensive that they will be once again turned into ‘luxury items’," Cartiglia said.
Cartiglia also argued the president was being hypocritical in pushing scarcity when he’s carrying out extravagant projects to renovate the White House. She listed the 90,000 square feet ballroom estimated to cost $350 million and adding golden flourishes in the Oval Office.
Toymakers in the U.S. have been hit hard by the tariffs. Quartz previously reported $1 billion in import taxes have hit an industry dependent on a fleet of Chinese factories to churn out cheap toys and games en masse. In Cartiglia’s case, she’s grappled with laying off four employees at her store and a 60% drop in her antique doll sales.
"You get 1 doll and 2 pencils"
Shortly after the president rolled out his global tariffs, prominent toymaker Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun!, told NPR in April that "Christmas was very much at risk" since toy companies were likely to raise prices in response on popular toys. Basic Fun! is the company that makes Care Bears, Tonka Trucks, and Lincoln Logs.
In a follow-up interview that aired last week, he predicted Americans would have to settle on fewer toys. "It will be full of a few less of the more desirable types of products, and consumers will have to, you know, be satisfied with sometimes the next or the third best thing on their list," Foreman told NPR.
Some Republicans expressed their frustration with Trump’s messaging at a moment Americans are unnerved about prices rising across the board. Surveys consistently show the issue of affordability ranks top of mind for voters. A new Politico poll published Wednesday indicated that half of Americans found groceries, utility bills, and healthcare costs tough to afford.
"This is the second time he’s run this doll rationing theory past the American public, and I’m skeptical that this is a winning strategy," Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum, told Quartz. "He doesn’t seem to behave as if he believes in the private sector. People buying what they want, displaying their values with their money."
Other dissatisfied Republicans included Steven Law, once chief of the Senate GOP’s election arm, and Eric Erickson, a conservative broadcaster.
Erickson made a dry observation in a Wednesday social media post, referring to a deal announced this week paving the way for Nvidia to sell a class of advanced chips to China. "China gets NVIDIA chips. Trump gets his ballroom. You get 1 doll and 2 pencils."