President Trump and his economic team are experimenting with a hodgepodge of messaging tactics to sell his tariff policy as it struggles to appease concerns over rising prices.
Trump this week began likening himself to a shopkeeper. Meanwhile, his Treasury secretary said young girls would be better off than their parents if they had fewer dolls this Christmas.
The contorting doesn’t seem to be landing with some Republicans or the public where polls show Trump’s trade policy growing unpopular.
“It’s going to be hard to find a metaphor that makes Americans— and many congressional Republicans— comfortable with the idea of higher prices, fewer options, and lower growth,” said former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.). “The administration needs to find a way to make this policy politically sustainable. They bought themselves some time, but the clock is ticking.”
Bruce Mehlman, former assistant secretary of Commerce for technology policy under President George W. Bush, argued there is a two-fold approach to the White House’s messaging — outlining multiple objectives and trying out what works.
“The varying messaging on tariffs reflects both the various goals they hope tariffs will advance – revenue, reshoring, reciprocity, respect – as well as the standard communications experimentation one expects from major issue campaigns, seeing what resonates best,” he said.
Trump and the White House have been beating back a host of questions related to trade and in particular when, if any deals, would be announced with just about any country.
Officials are adamant that several countries are willing to make trade deals with the U.S. but they have been scant on details. Instead, Trump and his administration have handled questions by offering an assortment of examples, analogies and slogans to explain the president’s tariff policy.
“I can announce 50 to 100 deals right now because I’m the shopkeeper and I keep the store,” Trump said. “They can go shopping or they don’t have to go shopping because everybody wants to shop here. This is like a beautiful store.”
Trump earlier this week likened the country to “a super luxury store, a store that has the goods” in insisting that countries would want to buy from the U.S.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, said one struggle around messaging stems from the White House working around saying tariffs are a type of tax.
“The reality is this, tariffs are taxes. They never want to admit that. The president doesn’t want to admit that,” Holtz-Eakin said. “And Republicans have lots and lots of messaging about how taxes are a bad idea and how taxes harm Americans’ abilities to do things they want. And so, it’s hard to do messaging, which is 180 degrees from that, and that’s what they’re struggling with.”
Trump’s rhetoric has also sometimes flip flopped. The president this week downplayed the need for trade deals, telling reporters, “we don’t have to sign deals” and that he could have 25 signed if he wanted.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent clarified that there are not ongoing talks with China, despite White House officials, including Trump, insisting otherwise in recent weeks. Chinese officials have said that U.S. officials are asking to meet in Switzerland over the weekend.
Holtz-Eakin argued that downplaying the need for trade deals is an issue because Wall Street is counting on reciprocal tariffs not being permanent to avoid another massive hit to the stock market like in the days after “liberation day.”
“I think they need to figure out that message in particular because financial markets, I believe, took the notion that those trade deals or the exit ramp from the reciprocal tariffs very seriously, and we saw equity markets recover, and valuations got back to where they were on April 2,” he said. “So, no deals… we could have just a rerun of that week following liberation day.”
The administration has also leaned further into Trump’s doll analogy, defending his recent suggestion that the U.S. needs a cultural shift on consumer spending. Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kirsten Welker that American children “don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three.”
Bessent, in an appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” argued that because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, children in the U.S. could have an improved life in the long term even if it means less in the short term.
“This reporter behind me was quite snarky the other day when President Trump talked about the girl having two dolls and he said… ‘What would you tell that girl?’” Bessent said. “And I said, ‘I would tell that young girl that you will have a better life than your parents, that you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents… your family will own a home. You will be able to … advance. You will have a good education. You will have economic freedom.’”
Meanwhile, senators on Capitol Hill have called on Trump to stop talking about dolls as he pitches his tariff plan, with many GOP lawmakers telling The Hill that they view the rhetoric as counterproductive.
“It’s not really sensitive to the circumstances of people that are struggling every day,” one Senate Republican said. “It would be helpful to be more relatable.”
Trump first posed the idea of Americans getting by with less as a way to pitch his tariff agenda in a Cabinet meeting last week, surrounded by a number of multimillionaires and billionaires serving in the administration.
Others have also taken note that the messaging appears tone deaf, suggesting Trump try another strategy to sell his tariff plan to Americans.
Political commentator and former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said Trump has “no strategy” with his talk about the price of dolls.
“Rich guys say anything they want to say, OK? And since he fits into that category from the time he’s been 7 years old, he said whatever he wants to say,” he told NewsNation’s Leland Vittert.
