The Trump administration is in damage control mode after Donald Trump said this past week that kids are going to have to learn to live with having fewer toys because of the tariffs he imposed. Out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is getting particularly pointed criticism for his stilted defense of higher prices on consumer goods.

“Maybe 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,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting last week, dismissing concerns that his taxes on imported goods will negatively affect Americans’ lives.

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Then, in an interview with NBC this weekend, Trump reiterated that people “Don’t need to have 30 dolls” and added that people also “don’t need to have 250 pencils, they can have five.”

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This kind of rhetoric, telling people that they will have to get by with less, flies in the face of Trump’s promises to lower prices of consumer goods during his campaign last year, but the administration appears to now be united in pushing the message that Americans should be happy to get by with less as a result of Trump intentionally increasing prices.

In a Fox News appearance yesterday, Secretary Bessent was downright indignant that anyone was complaining that the prices of goods will go up.

“This reporter behind me was quite snarky the other day when President Trump talked about the girl having two dolls,” Bessent said, audibly annoyed. “He said, ‘What would you tell that girl?’

“I said, I would tell that young girl that you will have a better life than your parents. That you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents, which working-class Americans had abandoned that idea. Your family will own a home, you will be able to advance, you will have a good education, you will have economic freedom. That’s what we are advancing.”

Bessent says that little girls who are sad about having fewer dolls should just have it explained to them that they will have a better life for it

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 7, 2025 at 1:15 AM

Tariffs are taxes on imported goods that are passed along to consumers, raising the prices of goods that are imported as well as goods that are produced domestically because they often depend on foreign inputs, and they face less price competition from foreign goods with steep tariffs. Tariffs lower purchasing power in the short term by raising prices, and they make a nation less wealthy in the long term by taking away the benefits of free trade.

The toy industry will be particularly hard hit by the tariffs since Trump’s tariffs are higher for goods imported from China, where a lot of toys are produced.

Bessent’s suggestion to give children a lecture on MAGA economics instead of toys got mocked on social media.