In his interview with NBC News yesterday Trump tripled down on his assertion that the prospect of American kids having fewer toys as a result of his tariff policy driving up prices is a good thing. He said:

I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs – that’s 11 years old – needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls, because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.

I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five. We don’t have to waste money on a trade deficit with China for things we don’t need, for junk that we don’t need.

Politico notes: “From a philosophical point of view, we’re trying to think of the last time an American president – or any western leader – decided to argue against abundance and consumer choice. From a political point of view, these quotes have a dangerous whiff of ‘let them eat cake’ about them, given how many American families are just trying to make ends meet. Naturally, Trump’s opponents are already pulling out old [and very gold] photos of his own children that suggest they were not exactly subjected to these kinds of constraints themselves.”