In a White House Cabinet meeting, President Trump acknowledged the price pressures his tariffs will present on consumer products: "Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls."
Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman weighs in on Trump's comments and the constraint consumers will notice in available goods. Chinese officials have stated they are open to enter into trade negotiations with the Trump administration.
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During a cabinet meeting at the White House this week, President Donald Trump acknowledged that his tariffs could result in fewer and costlier products in the United States, and they could have a direct impact on the children of America.
Right now, and I told you before they're having tremendous difficulty because their factories are not doing business. Uh, they made a trillion dollars when would buy trillion dollars even a trillion one. Uh would buy selling us stuff, much of what we don't need, you know. Somebody said all the shelves are going to be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know.
And that's exactly where Rick Newman is gonna kick us off in this weekend's rendition of Trump economics. Certainly that comment got a lot of attention, uh, this week when the president said that, Rick.
And, uh, you know, the question wasn't even what do you think, uh, American consumers should do as, uh, prices of imported products go up and we start to see shortages. They just the question was just, have you talked to President Xi Jinping of China about the trade war? And Trump meandered into this question, uh, or into saying, well, maybe we just need to basically just saying, we need to buy less stuff. Um, and kids have too many toys anyway. So we're gonna buy, uh, less stuff, but it's gonna be American-made, it's gonna cost a little bit more. And I guess everybody's gonna be happy. Um, what that tells me is a couple of things. First of all, the message has gotten through to Trump that we are going to have, uh, some product shortages. So that means his economic advisors are telling him, look, we've got, um, basically, there are no Chinese imports coming into the United States right now. I mean, those ships are either idled at sea, or they're not even leaving China. Um, so when inventories run out here in the United States, we're just we're just gonna have a lot fewer, um, lower selection of shoes, toys, electronics, appliances, things like this. So Trump's Trump's economic advisors are telling him that. And number two, he's he's testing out ways to try to explain his tariff policy to Americans as they start to notice the, uh, the pain that these tariffs are going to bring. I don't think that's a great line, uh, telling Americans to buy less is not the kind of message they like to hear. As we know, the whole US economy runs on consumer spending. Uh, so maybe we will get, uh, a few different lines from Trump in the next couple of weeks as he tries a different approach.
Thanks, Rick.
Bye, guys.
