Trump Is Right: Consumerism And Communism Are Two Great Reasons To Buy Less Junk From China
When it comes to Donald Trump, a decade-long political career has taught Americans to expect the unexpected. Somehow, a discussion about toys for girls turned into a potentially teachable moment regarding the limitations of American consumerism.
In his recent interview with NBC News discussing the first 100 days of his second term, the president defended the effects of his tariffs by saying that “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.” He came back to the analogy later in the interview:
I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three….You don’t need to have, as I said, 35 dolls. You can have two, three, four, and save a lot of money. We don’t need to feed the beast.
Trump was referring to China as “the beast,” but he just as easily could have been describing a culture that tries to encourage Americans to part with their money to buy goods of dubious value for dubious reasons — as a status symbol, or a way to solve an emotional want rather than a physical need.
Flawed Messenger …
Let us stipulate that Donald Trump represents a highly imperfect person to deliver a message skeptical of consumerism, on multiple levels. First, Trump himself has made a career out of sticking his name and/or likeness on myriad consumer goods, most of which would hardly be called necessities. From watches and cologne to laptop stickers and coins both tangible and not (i.e., non-fungible tokens), much of Trump’s 21st-century wealth has stemmed from selling people consumer goods that, in his NBC interview, he suggested they did not need and should not purchase as much.
Second, as the scion of a real-estate magnate who built on his father’s business, Trump has rarely, if ever, lacked for anything with respect to material possessions. A cynic, on hearing his comments about Americans’ need to sacrifice by purchasing fewer goods, might tell the president, “You first.” I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the chief executive to board up Mar-a-Lago, or make other similar gestures, for the duration of any trade war with China or other countries.
… But an Accurate Message
But a flawed messenger does not necessarily negate the accuracy of that message. In this case, the president articulated one of the problems that goes well beyond (but exacerbates) our trade deficit with China: Many Americans buy, and hold, far more goods than they actually use, or could ever hope to use, in their day-to-day lives.
I recently discovered this after several of my kitchen cabinets got damaged in flooding some months ago. As I went through a laborious process of getting the cabinets replaced, I emptied their contents into a series of boxes. For far too many months, I have kept the vast majority of those cabinets’ contents in their boxes, undisturbed and unopened.
In other words, I had — and have — more kitchen accoutrements than I use while cooking. While some of the equipment has stayed packed in those boxes for a reason — I can’t realistically host parties while my kitchen awaits renovations, and so have little use for my glass pitchers and serving trays at present — the realization also dawned on me: I have a lot of stuff, and stuff that I don’t use. And yet, as someone with a modest condominium with fewer than 800 square feet of space, I have less “stuff” than most 21st-century Americans.
Consumer Culture
That explains the problem: We as a society have had our immediate physical needs supplied, and therefore we can and do spend much of our time pursuing things we want — fancy cars, clothes, jewelry, and (of course) bigger houses to put all those things in.
But in this case, the opposite of “more” is not “less” so much as “enough.” Being content with one’s possessions — focusing on experiences, particularly time shared with others — provides a far better pathway to peace and tranquility than the relentless pursuit of materialistic pleasure.
In giving his analogy regarding dolls, Trump tried to defend the effects of his trade and tariff policies. But in so doing, he — perhaps unwittingly — articulated a path that more Americans should follow, and not just because it would make us less dependent on buying goods from Communist China.
Jesus Christ is King
