Trump demands wartime sacrifices. Good luck with that.
His trade war is like World War 2, only much dumber and entirely self-inflicted.
📺 🎧 🎮 With corporate outlets obeying in advance, supporting independent political media is more important than ever right now. PN is possible thanks to paid subscribers. If you aren’t one already, please click the button below and become one to support our work. 📺 🎧 🎮
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.
“Do we want freedom?” Vance said. “Do we want an American way of life or do we want short-term satisfaction for every little thing? … We’re gonna have to choose between one or the other. We're gonna have to get a little uncomfortable. We’re maybe gonna have to be willing to pay a little bit more for certain consumer goods.”
During an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent echoed Trump’s doll austerity rhetoric. He said he’d tell any little girl upset about the lump of coal Trump is putting in her Christmas stocking that “you will have a better life than your parents, that you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents.”
The administration is appealing to wartime patriotism, even if Trump personally started this economic Vietnam. He’s actively escalating hostilities and has expressed no interest in any reasonable diplomacy that might end the trade war. The justification for the chaos he’s inflicted is based entirely in lies about economic conditions and a fundamental misunderstanding of how trade works.
On the topic of China, where Trump’s 145 percent tariff has resulted in what effectively amounts to an embargo, the president claimed on Tuesday that “by not trading, we're losing nothing. So we're saving a trillion dollars. That's a lot."
But trade is not a zero sum game where importers “lose” to exporters. The relatively cheap goods shipped to the US from China allows Americans to purchase all sorts of useful and pleasurable things at affordable prices. Or at least that was the case. Now, shipments from China have been halved and experts are warning of impending shortages.
"The American dream is not, 'let them eat flat screens' ... the American dream is not contingent on cheap baubles from China,” Bessent infamously claimed in March.
MAGAs aren’t thrilled about drinking the Kool-Aid
Trump and the GOP, with a rightwing media assist, might convince diehard MAGAs that China is ripping us off and Canada’s not truly our friend. But there’s a gigantic leap from Trump voters embracing their leader’s paranoid grievances and tolerating a major sustained blow to their material comfort.
After all, Trump was president during the covid pandemic and couldn’t sell his supporters on shared sacrifice for public health. MAGA resistance to covid mitigation efforts was almost immediate. (Seven Republican governors never issued stay-at-home orders in their states.) Protests against public health measures started in Democratic-run states as early as mid-April, barely a month after lockdowns were first imposed.
Feeling economic and political pressure, Trump buckled quickly. Not more than a week after declaring a national emergency for covid, he was already talking about lifting restrictions and reopening the economy.
A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Stephen takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please sign up to support our work.
But Trump couldn’t just make covid go away by executive order. He could, by contrast, end his tariffs madness today. But he won’t, and now Republicans are stuck begging voters to wait and see for an “art of the deal” miracle that’s unlikely to materialize.
Republican Rep. Mary Miller from Illinois, an agricultural state that does a lot of business with China, spun some outrageous propaganda this week during an interview on Real America’s Voice.
"Even people that are feeling a little pain from the tariffs are completely supportive of what President Trump is doing,” she said. “It takes time. The left are liars and the legacy media, they lie."
Miller’s response is a typical example of MAGA projection, since she’s the one lying when she claims that Americans support Trump’s actions on trade. According to a Navigator Research report, 56 percent of Americans oppose Trump’s tariffs, a 15 percent increase since just before his inauguration. A Washington Post poll from late last month showed that 70 percent of independents disapprove of the way Trump is handling tariffs, and it’s worth remembering that Americans haven’t yet really experienced tariff-related inflation or shortages.
During the 2024 campaign, voters trusted Trump over Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the economy. But if Trump assumed those voters were so clueless that they’re fine with him actively wrecking the economy, he was mistaken. A new CNN poll shows that 59 percent of the public believe Trump’s policies have actively worsened economic conditions. That’s up from 51 percent in March and in line with Biden’s worst numbers on the economy.
Trump’s advantage with low-engagement voters has also vanished while he steers the economy off a cliff. Last year, Trump won voters who paid no attention to news by a whopping 19 points. Now, data from Pew and YouGov reveal that his overall approval among voters who don’t closely follow the news has already plunged by almost 33 points.
A new PBS/NPR/Marist poll finds that Trump’s approval has cratered among rural voters, once a key area of his support. Only 40 percent of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, which is down 19 points from February. His chaotic trade war has directly threatened their livelihoods.
These people aren’t responding to anti-tariff op-eds in the Wall Street Journal. They’re personally experiencing what Rep. Miller dismissively calls a “little pain,” and they aren’t interested in giving Trump time to make it worse.
There are moments when Trump might seem like the MAGA Pied Piper who can convince his supporters to follow him to their doom. But his trade war continues to hit all the wrong notes with even his most loyal voters. Unless he changes his tune quickly, the GOP is headed for an electoral wipeout, but that could prove cold comfort if the US economy is left in shambles.
Check out Aaron’s latest podcast appearances
By Aaron Rupar
Earlier this week, I joined Malcolm Nance’s podcast to talk about my work, the intellectually dishonest techniques of rightwing media, how Fox tries to gaslight its own viewers about bad economic news, and much more.
Nance titled the episode “The Art of Propaganda,” which I think is apt. It was a lively and wide-ranging conversation. Check it out below.
Then, yesterday, I joined a Substack Live hosted my friend
to discuss political media and how the landscape for independent journalists and creators has changed during Trump 2.0.We got into our interactions with elected officials and congressional staffers, the leftie media ecosystem and how it stacks up with the better funded one on the right, and even how we handle the risk of nuisance lawsuits from well-heeled MAGAs.
Check out our full conversation below, and please remember to tune in Friday afternoons at 2pm eastern for my weekly Substack Live show with
of The Downballot.That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s newsletter, please support us by signing up. Paid subscribers make Public Notice possible.
Thanks for reading.
djt should be in a mental institution. That having been said, what sacrifices are djt and his cronies going to make? Billionaires have much, much more economic breathing room than hundredaires or thousandaires. It would be good for morale if djt and his cronies led the way in sacrificing for the war in djt’s head.
Another brilliant piece. Thank you.