Trump Is Wrong. Cheap Goods Are Awesome.
Donald Trump doesn’t think Americans deserve stuff. The right number of pencils for a family? Five. The right number of dolls for a little girl? Two, maybe three. His comments in recent interviews bear a striking similarity to those of left-wing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), who in 2015 famously bemoaned that consumers have too many deodorant options.
How did Trump—who campaigned on a promise of reducing inflation—become so eager to have Americans pay more for everyday commodities? While Trump may have made overtures to reducing prices, he’s long supported the kinds of economic interventions most likely to lead to inflation. And if you believe that protectionism is the path to prosperity for everyday Americans, your definition of prosperity starts to change pretty quickly.
Just a few months into his second term, Trump has so far enacted a sweeping protectionist agenda. He’s levied staggering tariffs that have hiked prices on everything from mattresses to cars to strollers and tanked the stock market. However, Trump and his defenders have remained strident, arguing that Americans just don’t need affordable imported goods.
Tariff defenders on the left and right seem to think this way—and don’t hesitate to frame these goods as somehow antithetical to a healthy society. In April, one conservative commenter went viral after he posted a photo of a dingy, cramped living room with the caption “Remember what they took from you.” Earlier this month, X was dominated by AI-generated images of 1950s-style family scenes with captions like, “We traded this for a higher GDP,” as if happy families are somehow incompatible with economic growth. In January
Article from Reason.com
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