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Trump demands wartime sacrifices. Good luck with that.
His trade war is like World War 2, only much dumber and entirely self-inflicted.
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By Stephen Robinson
Donald Trump launched a pointless trade war, and catastrophe is on the horizon. Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned yesterday that unless the president backs down on his tariffs, “they are likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment."
But the president is demanding that Americans sacrifice for … well, that part remains a mystery.
During an interview last week with Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, Trump said he’s fine if the US has to endure a recession. He’s also repeatedly promoted the upside of Americans enduring Soviet-era deprivation on his behalf.
“I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump said. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls ... they don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five."
Trump used this talking point again the same day his Meet the Press interview aired, but even less coherently: “A young lady — 10 year old girl, 9 year old girl, 15 year old girl — doesn't need 37 dolls. She could be very happy with two or three or four or five.”
The only problem is that telling Americans they need to sacrifice for the sake of someday potentially working at an iPhone factory is, to put it charitably, terrible politics.
It’s hard to miss that Trump’s trade plan has shifted from “90 deals in 90 days” to “start rationing children’s dolls and pencils.” Instead of a triumphant victory, Trump and complicit Republicans in Congress are preparing Americans for a long, hard slog.
As Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce put it during a CNN hit on Monday, "the idea that the Christmas trade is already starting to slow down and there might be less around, I get it. I think the American people will understand that because the American people understand shared sacrifice."
But any sense of “shared sacrifice” is inconsistent with the selfishness and materialism that is at the very heart of Trumpism.
Making matters worse, Trump sold voters during last year campaign’s on what was supposedly in it for them, with fantastical promises to magically lower prices and create new jobs from long-dead industries. He told his supporters he’d be their retribution, but instead he released the leopards to feast on their 401Ks.
MAGA Maoism
It’s absurd to demand people sacrifice for an assault on an economy that was steadily improving until the moment Trump returned to office. This has been described as “MAGA Maoism,” the twisted belief that Americans should accept unnecessary hardship for the sake of Dear Leader.
While voters and the media may have paid more attention to Trump’s bluster about lowering prices on day one, economic pain was actually a theme of his campaign. Elon Musk admitted at a town hall in October that Americans must accept "temporary hardship" once Trump is elected, and the Kamala Harris campaign posted footage on social media of an interview where JD Vance argued that true “freedom” from MAGA’s enemies would require significant economic sacrifice.
