President Trump, in his attempts to assuage fears over the impact of his trade war with China, is offering the American public some advice — go minimalist. 

Mr. Trump aired his surprising suggestion during a Cabinet meeting at the White House Wednesday while addressing concerns that his tariffs on China would soon result in store shelves being “empty.” 

“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” he mused. 

The 47th president, who can hardly be considered a minimalist himself, followed up on his Marie Kondo-esque advice by insisting that the goods produced by China are mostly non-essential to American consumers.

“They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which — not all of it — but much of which, we don’t need,” he said. 

Not everyone is enthusiastically embracing Mr. Trump’s thrifty lifestyle guidance, however. Economist Scott Lincicome, a frequent critic of the president’s economic policies, chided Mr. Trump for pushing “forced scarcity” and predicted that it won’t just be “dolls” that the public will have to cut down on.

“Now do this for clothing, shoes, food, appliances, consumer electronics, energy, construction materials, etc etc, and you start to see the problem,” he wrote on X. 

Mr. Trump’s call for austerity in the national interest diverges sharply from the latest trend among Democratic pundits pushing for an “abundance agenda.” The pro-growth movement, outlined in a recent book from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, seeks to counter the party’s longstanding reputation of letting undue regulation stifle progress.

The president’s comments come just a few hours after he instructed Americans to “be patient” with the economy despite the release of a worse-than-expected gross domestic product report. 

The report, released by the Department of Commerce on Wednesday, showed that GDP — which measures the country’s output of goods and services — shrank at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first three months of 2025. The contraction was bigger than economists expected, and is the worst quarterly performance for the economy since 2022.

Mr. Trump insisted, however, that the slump was a reflection of President Biden’s economic policies, not his own. He then shared a prediction on Truth Social: “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, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!” 

Later in the day, Mr. Trump reckoned that the impact of Mr. Biden’s economic policies could even extend to the second quarter. “This is Biden, and you can even say the next quarter is sort of Biden because it doesn’t just happen on a daily or hourly basis, but we’re turning it around,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a big shift.”