Free Trade

Eric Boehm | 5.2.2025 1:00 PM

President Donald Trump made headlines this week when he seemed to suggest that American families might be able to afford fewer toys due to his trade policies.

"Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls," Trump said on Wednesday, "and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally."

That was Trump's most direct admission yet about the potential costs of his trade war—which could reduce the average household's income by nearly $3,800 this year, according to the Yale Budget Lab's estimates.

But this was not a run-of-the-mill gaffe or another case of Trump saying the quiet part out loud. If anything, Trump was merely underlining a sentiment that's gained traction on the political right in recent years: that Americans should be forced to pay higher prices for basic goods and household items.

Don't believe me? Here are four other recent incidents in which national conservatives in Trump's orbit admitted as much.

Robert Lighthizer, August 2022

While speaking at the American Economic Forum, Trump's former U.S. Trade Representative dismissed free trade as being rooted in "a philosophy of consumption" that is too "materialistic."

"The best way to fix consumerism is to raise prices," Lighthizer said. "Is consumption really a problem in America?"

That might be easy to say as someone who has spent

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