Do your kids enjoy playing with toys? What about dolls? Well, buckle up, because the President of the United States says soon you’ll be able to afford a lot fewer of those. And he thinks that’s a really good thing.
President Donald Trump held a cabinet meeting on Wednesday where a wide range of topics was discussed—everything from how great Trump is to the fact that wearing two hats is the height of comedy. But Trump and his cabinet also talked about the tariffs that have been imposed on China, which currently sit at 145% and are starting to hit consumers who are ordering from places like Temu, Shein, and AliExpress.
Incredibly, Trump acknowledged that Americans would soon have a lot less choice in stores. And he described that future by giving a very stark hypothetical. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” Trump said.
Trump on China: “They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don’t need. Somebody said, ‘oh, the shelves are gonna be open.’ Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 30, 2025 at 10:38 AM
It was a truly baffling thing for an American president to say. And University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers explained on MSNBC that things could get very bad as Trump’s scheme becomes reality. Wolfers ntoed that the idea of how much you can afford to buy with your income is called “real income.” And if real income falls, that’s called a recession. Wolfers went on to explain that if things decline as badly as Trump’s example, where someone who bought 30 dolls could only afford to buy two dolls, that’s called a depression.
As CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla wrote on Bluesky, “The doll thing is visual, memorable and highly specific. He’s going to wish he could take that one back.” And it could be true that Trump will come to regret the way he phrased that. In the meantime, we’re just doing our best to laugh. So we’ve collected the funniest memes we’ve seen on social media about Trump’s idiotic line on dolls.
It’s going to be a very rough summer if Trump’s tariffs against China hold. And even if all of the tariffs were lifted tomorrow, (something Trump seems unlikely to do), there would still be a huge amount of chaos and disruption in the supply chains.
Gary Cohn, one of Trump’s economic advisors during his first term, appeared on Face the Nation last weekend and explained that it takes about 8 weeks for goods leaving China to get onto U.S. store shelves. And given that Trump’s “Liberation Day” was April 2, you can roughly start counting from there.
Gary Cohn says the impact of tariffs aren’t going to really hit for another 2-4 weeks.
“The vast majority of small business toy stores cannot order toys today because they cannot afford the 145% tariff. […] They’re either going out of business or they’re just going to wait and see what happens.”
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— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) April 27, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Best of luck, Americans. Trump is serious about making sure we all have a lower standard of living. And we’re going to soon find out exactly what that looks like, dolls or otherwise.
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