Trump's biggest economic mistake yet

"The core of the modern American dream is cheap stuff, and contrary to the president's suggestion earlier this year, it turns out little girls do need 30 dolls. Or, at least, their families want to be able to afford them, and they don't want the White House telling them otherwise. The Trump administration's line on its economic policies in the opening months of the president's second go-round was, in essence, deal with it."

""They had a theory of the case of how the economy would evolve earlier this year," says Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Policy Institute, an economic think tank. The administration thought mass deportations would open up jobs for American workers, DOGE-driven government layoffs would push workers toward private-sector roles, and tariffs would incentivize a manufacturing boom and reshoring. Thus far, most of it hasn't been working out. "Even nonpolitical people are aware that something's floundering here," Konczal says."

Cheap goods remain central to American consumption, and households want to afford many items for children without being told to accept less. Administration messaging framed short-term pain from tariffs, reshoring, and immigration limits as necessary for longer-term gains, but those tradeoffs have produced unclear payoffs. Rising prices and widespread frustration have made "affordability" a dominant public concern. Policy assumptions — including mass deportations opening jobs, government layoffs freeing labor, and tariffs driving a manufacturing comeback — have underperformed, leaving political leaders to scramble with new and uncertain proposals while consumers feel the pinch.

Read at Business Insider