Trump says US kids may get '2 dolls instead of 30,' but China will
suffer more in a trade war
[May 01, 2025] By
JOSH BOAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday acknowledged that
his tariffs could result in fewer and costlier products in the United
States, saying American kids might "have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,"
but he insisted China will suffer more from his trade war.
The Republican president has tried to reassure a nervous country that
his tariffs will not provoke a recession, after a new government report
showed the U.S. economy shrank during the first three months of the
year.
Trump was quick to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any
setbacks while telling his Cabinet that his tariffs meant China was
“having tremendous difficulty because their factories are not doing
business,” adding that the U.S. did not really need imports from the
world's dominant manufacturer.
“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump
continued, offering a hypothetical. "Well, maybe the children will have
two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple
bucks more than they would normally.”
His remarks followed a defensive morning after the Commerce Department
reported that the U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.3% during
the first quarter. Behind the decline was a surge in imports as
companies tried to front-run the sweeping tariffs on autos, steel,
aluminum and almost every country. And even positive signs of increased
domestic consumption indicated that purchases might be occurring before
the import taxes lead to price increases.
Trump pointed his finger at Biden as the stock market fell Wednesday
morning in response to the gross domestic product report.
“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the Republican president,
who took office in January, posted on his social media site. “Tariffs
will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the
USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of
the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH
TARIFFS.”
But the GDP report gives Democrats ammunition to claim that Trump’s
policies could shove the economy into a recession. Democrats’ statements
after the GDP report noted how quickly the economy, which still has a
healthy 4.2% unemployment rate, appears to lose momentum within weeks of
Trump’s return.
A top House Democrat, Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, said that
“we’ve only seen the beginning of the dangerous impacts from Trump’s
random policies.” She noted that U.S. manufacturers still depend on
parts and components from China to assemble final goods and said Trump's
approach to trade reflected a misunderstanding of the investment and
certainty that domestic companies need in order to construct more
factories and create jobs.
“Chaos and dysfunction are not going to help build investment," said
DelBene, who leads the House Democrats' congressional campaign efforts.
“A strong economy needs stability and certainty. We haven’t seen that.”
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Shipping containers are seen ready for transport at the Guangzhou
Port in the Nansha district in southern China's Guangdong province,
April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
 The GDP report landed as Trump
sought to put the focus on new corporate investments in the U.S. as
he spends the week celebrating his 100th day in office. He delivered
remarks on Wednesday afternoon and called out investments from
companies such as Nvidia, Soft Bank, Apple, Johnson & Johnson and
others that he said reflected the coming prosperity.
Still, Trump's economic message contains some clashing arguments and
dismisses data that raises red flags.
He wants credit for an aggressive first 100 days back in the White
House that included mass layoffs of federal workers and the start of
a trade war with 145% in new tariffs against China. He also wants to
blame the negative response of the financial markets on Biden, who
left office months ago. He's also saying his tariffs are negotiating
tools to generate trade deals, but at the same time banking on
hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to help cover his
planned income tax cuts.
In a town hall Wednesday night on NewsNation, Trump said he didn't
believe he had made any mistakes during the start of his second term
and thought he could turn around a public that has severe doubts
about his tariffs.
“I just think that I’ll be able to convince people how good this
is,” he said.
At the Cabinet meeting, Trump highlighted the positive aspects of
the GDP report. But that session revealed how his administration is
also trying to take credit for policies that involve the Biden
administration.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick talked about his recent trip to
Arizona to see the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s computer
chip factories. The company notes on its website that it announced
plans in May 2020, during Trump's first term, when the coronavirus
pandemic disrupted the global economy, to build its first plant in
Arizona. The company announced a second factory in December 2022,
when Biden was in office. After getting up to $6.6 billion in
commitments in 2024 from the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, TSMC
announced plans for a third plant.
Trump dismissed the importance of the government support that Biden
made possible for computer chip factories to open domestically.
“They’re building because of the tariffs,” Trump said.
Yet Democrats are quick to say that Trump inherited an economy on a
steady course of low unemployment and declining inflation that his
tariff plans have almost immediately disrupted.
“In just 100 days, President Trump has taken the U.S. economy from
strong, stable growth to negative GDP," said Heather Boushey, a
former member of Biden's White House Council of Economic Advisers.
"This astonishing turn of fortune is directly due to the incoherence
of his economic policy and his mismanagement of federal policy more
generally.”
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