Many have accused President Donald Trump of having a “Marie Antoinette” moment last weekend on Meet the Press.
“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs to have 30 dolls,” he told host Kristen Welker. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.”
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Trump’s fixation on the ideal number of dolls — he brought the topic up again later that day aboard Air Force One — sparked a flurry of uncomfortable questions. You couldn’t help but wonder: Was Ivanka ever denied a coveted doll? And what other costs besides dolls are about to skyrocket because of Trump’s tariffs?
But buried within the comment was an unusually grounded insight for a president given to flashy rhetoric about “winning” and “getting rich.” The public should care less about the flood of cheap consumer goods from China — “junk,” as he rightly called it — than about meaningful experiences and building connections. Families and individuals would do well to embrace fewer options in all aspects of life, especially in exchange for sounder economic and moral fundamentals.
This likely wasn’t Trump’s intent. It’s hard to picture the man whose name famously graces countless “junk” products, championing scarcity on purpose.
Yet he should. The less-is-more principle resonates deeply in an age of mass consumerism, information overload, and fraying social bonds. It would also lend his tariff program, which has thus far appeared slapdash and unserious, a much-needed dose of vision and moral weight.
Trump’s comment about dolls echoes what psychologists have long known about scarcity, and it reflects a profound truth about human desire and fulfillment. Counterintuitive as it may sound, reducing the number of toys in a child’s collection sparks richer, more creative play. A large body of research, including a recent study from the University of Toledo, shows that fewer toys foster deeper engagement, longer-lasting play, and greater creativity and sophistication.
A large body of research, including a recent study from the University of Toledo, shows that fewer toys lead to richer play experiences, lasting longer and involving deeper creativity and sophistication. Having fewer toys to choose from means a greater likelihood of commitment to playing with the toys you have, while having numerous options means skipping quickly from one toy to the next without engaging deeply.
For instance, a child with only a spaceman, a matchbox car, and a set of marbles will dream up new worlds: an astro-adventurer riding an intergalactic Mustang through an imaginary galaxy. The scarcity of options stimulates the child’s imagination and yields fruitful play.
But a child with the entire spaceman box set, which includes 34 of his companion spacemen, 14 rocket ships, and a solar system fit to scale, doesn’t need to exercise her imagination very hard, or even at all. What at first appears enthralling quickly starts to bore. The child’s mind isn’t fully anchored in the moment, and so it drifts to the next thing.
Earlier research finds that toy scarcity also fosters social skills and group dynamics. In the 1990s, a German Toy-Free Kindergarten project study removed all toys from the classroom for three months, leaving only sticks, blankets, and boxes. This resulted in children becoming more inventive, collaborative, and socially engaged.
The same scarcity principle shapes adult lives, too, where too many choices can hinder meaningful connections. Ask anyone who has attempted to find love through dating apps if a seemingly unlimited number of faces to swipe left or right through improves the process. Dating apps, in theory, should augment the chance of finding love by introducing the user to mates they’d have never otherwise met.
But instead of increasing the likelihood of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right, these apps only increase the likelihood of securing an abundance of first dates, and maybe seconds, that rarely amount to much. A recent study found that single women who use dating apps swipe through an average of 4,089 profiles before entering into a serious relationship. 30% of users believe that two dates a week with new people are necessary to find a long-term relationship.
Despite the endless options produced by online dating — on average, app users have active profiles on three dating apps at a time — marriage rates continue to plummet. According to Pew Research, the number of 40-year-olds who never married is at an all-time high of 25%.
Psychologists argue that this abundance creates “choice overload,” where too many options overwhelm users, reducing their investment in any single connection. Why take the time to get to know any single person when the possibility of a more perfect match floats perpetually in your purse or pocket?
Choice overload extends far beyond toys and dating. Americans spend increasingly more time searching for movies and television shows and less time actually watching them, depriving themselves of whatever value those videos might hold. They now consult numerous online news outlets each day, scanning headlines but rarely reading full articles as they might have in the days of newspapers. Planning a vacation now means scrolling through thousands of Airbnb listings, which causes indecision and constant second-guessing.
All the while, we become less present to one another, more isolated psychologically and physically, and fall deeper in debt thanks to frivolous purchases.
Trump could have made the case for a moral reimagining of our economic priorities by addressing the choice overload that makes the public increasingly anxious, bored, and indebted. Trump’s tariff policies, it could be argued, might curb the flood of low-quality goods and incentivize domestic manufacturers to produce better, if slightly more expensive, products. This shift would not only shrink the trade deficit and reduce dependency on foreign goods but also align with the psychological benefits of scarcity, encouraging consumers to invest in fewer, more meaningful purchases.
Of course, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that tariffs will produce these effects. Increased consumer costs could hit consumers harder than expected; a boom in the manufacturing sector, already struggling to fill good-paying jobs and drifting toward automation, could produce a less positive effect than hoped; and political pushback could torpedo the effort in its infancy. But filling in the moral dimension of the tariff plan by tying it to the benefits of a scarcity agenda would make the effort coherent in a way it presently isn’t.
Trump’s moral imagination has never indicated a capacity for going beyond the goal of “getting rich.” Instead of making the case that our economic priorities are unwise and unhealthy, Trump promised the public the moon: lowered costs on everything — without any talk of “taking medicine” — and, as he said on the White House lawn in early April, a nation that would “become so rich you’re not going to know where to spend all that money.”
What the nation needs in the long term is not merely lowered prices but revolutionized priorities. We must once again root ourselves in a truer idea of freedom than what abundant choice provides, one that encourages and enables rich experiences, deeper bonds, and greater appreciation for the work of our hands. Americans have far more options than they need, and buy too much junk. There should be no shame in saying so.