Is Trump waging a war on dolls?

On Wednesday, Trump predicted during a Cabinet meeting that higher prices caused by tariffs will mean “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.” The next morning, Miller doubled down in a White House briefing, suggesting that American parents agree that fewer dolls would be better.

People of all ideological stripes, from liberals to conservatives to the late Pope Francis, have cautioned against American overconsumption – and suggested that the world’s richest nation should make do with less. But Trump has never come close to espousing such a philosophy, not even in his messaging around his tariff policies, which threaten to raise prices on myriad consumer products, including dolls. In his second term, the president has decorated the Oval Office with gilded accents – and has promised repeatedly, as he did Tuesday at a political rally in Warren, Michigan, to “make America wealthy again.”

History shows that there is great political peril in asking Americans to do more with less. Just ask Jimmy Carter, the late president whom Republicans have pilloried for nearly 50 years for scolding the country to make sacrifices during the energy crisis of the late 1970s.

Plus, there are few more uniquely American icons than toy dolls. Barbie was the runaway bestseller for decades before it became a blockbuster movie in 2023. One of the most popular brands of dolls is literally called American Girl. And among the best-selling dolls are action figures marketed to boys, such as the U.S.-military-inspired G.I. Joe.

Some Democrats have suggested that Trump’s comments are an act of political self-sabotage – a bridge too far for American consumers, who don’t want to be told by a rich politician that their children should expect a smaller-than-usual stack of toys on Christmas morning.

But in an era marked by American overconsumption, there’s a certain unavoidable reality to Trump’s suggestion, with some parents nodding their heads: Perhaps the answer is, in fact, that American children don’t need so many toys.

Trump’s doll forecast came at the end of his Wednesday Cabinet meeting, in which he talked about the effect of tariffs on the Chinese economy and veered surprisingly close to the language of the anti-consumerism, minimalism, sustainable living and simplicity movements – none of which have ever before been associated with the 47th president.

Before the new tariffs, Chinese manufacturers were getting rich by “selling this stuff, much of it we don’t need,” the president said. He suggested that Americans will be able to handle the effects of the trade war with relative ease.

“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump said. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

The trade-off between 30 cheap dolls and two more expensive ones, he suggested, was a bigger problem for China than for American consumers.

“They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which – not all of it – but much of which we don’t need,” Trump said.

Democrats have leaped at the opportunity to highlight the irony of such remarks coming from Trump – an uber-wealthy celebrity with a personal brand built around luxury, excess and the power of conspicuous consumption suddenly wagging his finger at average Americans and suggesting that their children should get by on fewer toys.

“Trump and Musk do not have a clue about what it means for a working-class family trying to buy presents for the kids, or to take care of the basic necessities of life,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday night. “I think it’s an incredible arrogance and ignorance on the part of these people who have so much wealth and so much money.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) said the doll remarks served as evidence that Trump doesn’t understand the true consequences of his sweeping tariffs.

“It’s not the two dolls that’s the problem,” Gallego said. “It’s the fact that less people are going to be shopping, which means there’s going to be less people stocking their shelves, there’s gonna be less jobs, less sales tax collected for localities, that means people aren’t gonna be able to pay cops and firefighters. This is going to end up causing problems.”

Perhaps the prospect of empty municipal coffers and unpaid firefighters is a lot to put on some dolls. But there’s a certain irony to the fact that Trump’s message of doll retrenchment is coming at a moment when dolls are king and queen.

In the wake of an acclaimed summer blockbuster two years ago, Barbie made a retail comeback. Then the New Yorker proclaimed it “the Year of the Doll.” The American toy industry was doing well – until tariffs this year started to threaten the boom.

According to a survey published last month by the Toy Association, which represents the American toy industry, more than 40 percent of U.S. toy companies said they expected to go out of business in coming weeks or months as a result of new tariff policy.

The Toy Association did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s most recent forecast on the future of America’s doll supply. Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, also did not return a request for comment.

On Thursday morning, Miller doubled down on the less-doll-is-more exhortation.

Asked at a White House news briefing about Trump’s comments – and the president’s tacit acknowledgment that the trade war is driving up prices – Miller said he believed higher prices might encourage American parents to be choosier in their selection of toys for their children.

Miller said he spoke from experience as a parent of young children that Trump “was making the point that I think almost every American consumer agrees with.”

“If you had a choice between a doll from China that might have, say, lead paint in it, that is not as well-constructed as a doll made in America that has a higher environmental and regulatory standard and that is made to a higher degree of quality, and those two products are both on Amazon,” Miller said, “then, yes, you probably would be willing to pay more for a better-made American product.”

Those American products are made, incidentally, in a regulatory environment that, in some cases, the Trump administration is working to roll back. During the first Trump term, Environmental Protection Agency officials proposed eliminating two programs focused on limiting children’s exposure to lead-based paint. And imports sold in the U.S. market are often subject to the same regulatory standards as domestic products.

The comments from Miller and Trump have struck a chord with some parents, who acknowledge – reluctantly or not – that many children have more toys than they need or even want.

“Do I believe that kids could live with two dolls rather than 30 dolls?” asked J.B. MacKinnon on Thursday. “I absolutely think they could, yeah.”

MacKinnon is the author of a book on the history and cultural effects of overconsumption called “The Day the World Stops Shopping.” Families are considering opting for fewer toys for their children for many reasons, he said – to help the environment, rein in materialistic tendencies in their children, preserve their own budgets and mental health. In some cases, Trump’s tariffs are leading Americans to grapple more meaningfully with the cost of what it takes to ship small, cheap items from the other side of the world at a moment’s notice.

However, MacKinnon said, curbing materialism is certainly not the stated goal of Trump’s tariffs. Nor is the current president the right messenger for that idea.

“For a lot of Americans, that message is going to be pretty hard to stomach coming from someone like him … a hyper-consumer and about as materialistic as a person can be,” MacKinnon said.

Trump isn’t the first president to deliver a message to the American people focused on austerity and a collective sacrifice. In 1977, Carter delivered his infamous “cardigan speech” in which he sat by a fireplace and encouraged Americans to do their part in tackling the energy crisis facing the country – to “learn to live thriftily” and “find ways to adjust.”

“All of us must learn to waste less energy,” Carter said in the speech. “Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime, and 55 degrees at night, we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.”

As he spoke, Carter wore a beige cardigan, as if to underscore the indoor wardrobe necessary for the thriftier lifestyle he was selling.

The speech did not go over well. Carter was derided by conservatives as a patronizing scold, out-of-touch and defeatist. Unlike Trump, however, Carter avoided accusations of hypocrisy because he was already well-known for excessive frugality – even when it came to running the White House.

“He turned off the air conditioners,” Vice President Walter Mondale told a PBS documentary in 2002. “And it was so hot in the White House, people would come in there – it was unbelievable. It would be a hundred above in there.”

Trump, in contrast, “knows America is blessed with an abundance of liquid gold below our feet and in the form of fossil fuels,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at her briefing Thursday.

In other words, there is little risk of Carter-level austerity from this administration.