President Trump is now telling Americans to expect a tougher economic reality. With his tariffs on foreign goods, he’s signaling that prices are going up, and that ordinary Americans will bear the brunt of the pain.
For weeks, Trump and his economic team insisted that the tariffs would only cause temporary disruption and that the markets would eventually settle. But now, his message has shifted sharply from his campaign promise of lowering prices and making America ‘wealthy’ again. Instead, Trump is telling Americans to buy less, pay more, and shoulder the burden of his sweeping tariffs.
In a recent interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, she asked Trump if he was willing to admit that his tariffs would lead to higher prices. Trump’s response at first was that tariffs would “make us rich,” echoing his past claims about his economic strategy. But then, he took a different approach, suggesting that Americans don’t need to buy as much, especially when it comes to things like toys.
“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,” Trump said, acknowledging that the prices of these items would likely increase.
This is a sharp contrast to what Trump promised on the campaign trail. Back then, he spent much of his time criticizing inflation under former President Biden and promised to bring down prices if elected. Just last week, Trump told ABC News that his economic policy was exactly what voters had signed up for.
Recently, Trump has acknowledged some “disturbance” in the economy since his tariffs were put in place. During his campaign, he often spoke about imposing tariffs on China, the European Union, Canada, and Mexico, but his actual policy ended up slapping tariffs on almost every country, throwing the U.S. and global markets into disarray.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, criticized Trump’s shift in messaging, calling it “pivoting” on an unpopular policy.
“This feels tone-deaf to me. This is, ‘You’re too materialistic. You don’t need as many dolls as you think,’” Holtz-Eakin said. “And he’s a very strange messenger for that message, and I don’t think it’s going to sell.”
Marc Short, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, warned that Trump could alienate voters if he keeps pushing this “buy less” idea. He called it a “damaging message” that gives off “a little bit of an elitism perspective.”
Trump’s high tariffs on China and other trading partners are hitting low- and middle-income Americans the hardest. Daniel Hornung, deputy director of the National Economic Council during the Biden administration, explained, “Saying low- and middle-income people should just buy less or buy more expensive stuff misses an important point. We have large swaths of the country that don’t make enough money to afford to buy expensive things, and it’s very important to them whether or not something costs 5 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent or 100 percent more.”
In response to mounting pressure from Wall Street and his own party, Trump paused some of the higher tariffs, but a 10 percent tariff remains on all countries, along with a 145 percent tariff on China.
Despite the White House claiming that some trade deals are close to being finalized, markets continue to face uncertainty about the future of tariffs and trade relations. Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist, pointed out that Trump’s strategy contradicts itself.
“They’re in complete conflict with each other, because if it’s just a negotiating ploy, you don’t try to bring domestic production home at all,” Edwards said. “If it’s actually about domestic production, negotiation’s off the table because I don’t care what you offer me, this is about jobs at home.”
Wall Street projections also suggest that a recession could be coming, adding to the uncertainty. When Welker asked Trump if he was OK with the possibility of a recession, he replied, “Look, yeah. Everything’s OK. What we are — I said this is a transition period.”
Trump’s tariffs are also losing public support. A recent CNN poll showed that nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe his policies are making the economy worse, and a Gallup poll found that 89 percent of Americans think tariffs will raise prices.
As the economy remains shaky, Republican lawmakers will be key to determining whether Trump’s economic strategy continues to work. “I don’t know that he ever loses his base, but the fundamental question is, when does he lose the Republicans in Congress who need to run for reelection?” said Holtz-Eakin. “If the president gets unpopular enough … you start trying to distance yourself, and when you start to see that, you know, Trump’s lost.”
