When Donald Trump announced this week that American children will have to settle for fewer toys at Christmas, unflattering comparisons have been brought to the characters noted in history.
“It looked like Marie Antoinette saying” let them eat cake, “said Whit Ayres, a republican sounder.
Economists and businessmen have warned for weeks that the 145% of the president price On China will increase the prices of ordinary Americans. The White House has always rejected this story.
But Wednesday, the mask slipped. Trump said China had done a “dollars billion … who sells us things, (and) that we don't need”.
He said that people had warned empty shelves and that “maybe children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls … and maybe the two dolls will cost a few dollars more than they would normally do it.” But “we have to get a good deal,” he added.
Here is the president grateful that his trade war could cause real difficulties to voters – many of whom have elected him to reduce the cost of living and stimulate growth.
Trump's enemies could barely believe their luck. They laughed at him on social networks as “Grinch who stole Christmas” and “scrooge mctrump”. A television presenter, channeling the Sopranoscalled it “Donny 2 dolls”.
“'Your family will have less, but it will be more expensive' 'is definitely a solid economic argument,” wrote the comic strip Mike Drucker on X.
Trump is not the first president to demand sacrifices of the American people. After the attack by Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the Second World War, Franklin D Roosevelt called for a “self” program, with higher taxes and the rationing of goods.
“We are all used to spending money for things we want, things, however, that are not absolutely essential,” he said in April 1942. “We will have to give up this kind of spending.”
But FDR's words have gained weight because they were faced with the national emergencies launched by war and the revolution, said Julian Zelizer, professor of political history at Princeton University.
“This is a crisis created by the person asking you to sacrifice,” he said. “So it's much less convincing.”
Trump's exhortations include a political risk similar to that of Jimmy Carter's widely reprimanded “discourse” discourse from July 1979 to the strongest of the Middle East oil crisis, when he called on citizens to “settle your thermostats to save fuel”. He continued to lose the presidency against Ronald Reagan in a landslide the following year.
Consumers have reacted with dismay at Trump's call. “Does that mean that I'm going to have to store dolls for my grandchildren now?” said Cheryl, a grandmother in the 1970s shopping in Austin, Texas. “My husband is already talking about toilet storage.”
Trump's comments are part of a wave of declarations from the White House depreciating trade with China. “The American dream does not depend on the cheap balls of China”, ” Scott betsSaid the secretary to the Treasury in March. “We focus on affordability, but they are mortgages, they are cars, they are real wage gains.”
Such comments horrified toys. “I have been attacked by my own government,” said Rick Woldenberg, Managing Director of Learning Resources, an Illinois -based company that has been manufacturing toys and educational products and has been manufacturing in China for four decades.
“To denigrate what we do and say that these things are insignificant and unimportant and people should happen without them-it's just degrading,” he added. “We don't think we just create lots of plastic for people.”
The big names in the industry have experienced significant stock market cuts. Mattel's share price, manufacturer of Barbie Dolls, fell 18% since the “Liberation Day” in April, when Trump unveiled his reciprocal prices.
Isaac Larian, director general of MGA Entertainment, the largest toome, in the United States, said that the prices will be “disastrous”, predicting a “30 to 40% drop in sales”.
The company obtains 65% of its products from Chinese factories, and prices will force them to massively increase prices – from $ 15 to $ 29 to $ 30 for a Bratz doll, one of its most popular items.
“If the prices are not reduced, we will be forced to dismiss people, including people from our factory here actually toys in the United States,” said Larian, who said he had voted for Trump last November.
He asked for a “suspended from two to three years” on import samples, similar to the exemption that Trump has enabled smartphones and computers, while MGA has an investment of $ 40 million in a new factory in American territory. “It will give him the opportunity to save Christmas,” he said.
However, no sign exists in a respite in the trade war, with disturbing implications for the economy. The University of Yale’s budget laboratory said the prices that Trump has announced in the world since adoption would reduce US economic growth by 1.1% in 2025.
Some evidence shows that they slow down the will of people to spend. The feeling of consumer feeling of the University of Michigan for April was 52.2, compared to 57 in March, while one -year inflation expectations increased from 5% in March to 6.5% in April, its highest reading since 1981.
Trump insisted that prices are a medication necessary for a patient in difficulty which depends far too important on imported goods. They will force, the relocation of manufacturing and supply chains at the American heart, while the real cost of prices will be borne by exporting countries, not American consumers.
But voters express growing doubts about Trump's economic policies. A recent survey gave him a note of approval of only 42%, a historically low level for a president at the start of a quarter.
Perhaps the most worrying for the White House, voters seem to lose confidence in its management of the economy – one of its strongest combinations in the elections of last November.
Alex Conant, a republican consultant who was director of communications for the presidential candidacy of Marco Rubio in 2016, said that there was nothing wrong with asking the voters to make a sacrifice, but “you must give them a really clear reason for which”.
The White House said the prices were necessary to increase income and help balance the budget, isolate China, bring back manufacturing and, in the case of Mexico and Canada, to reduce smuggling of fentanyl and illegal immigration.
“These reasons cannot all be true at the same time,” he said.
Additional Kristina Shevory report in Austin.
