President Trump re-upped his attacks on cheap Chinese imports and stood by his assertion that American children will be fine if they “have two dolls instead of 30.”
“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs – that’s 11 years old – needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump reiterated to NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.
“I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.”
Last week, Trump raised eyebrows for suggesting that children will be fine if they have fewer dolls with which to play. Top policy adviser Stephen Miller later mused that dolls manufactured in China “might have … lead paint in it.”
The president emphasized that he’s not predicting that American consumers will see empty store shelves, but rather that he’s merely trying to close the trade deficit with China.
“No, I’m not saying that,” he said when asked about whether he was expecting shortages. “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.”
The president stressed that “we don’t have to waste money on a trade deficit with China” for “junk that we don’t need” and ripped into America’s longstanding trade imbalance.
In April, Trump ratcheted up tariffs on imports from China to 145% for most goods, with a few exemptions in place.