Five pencils, two dolls and a president who really wants a big new plane

PLANES, dolls and pencils - how many does a person really need? America’s children will have to make do with fewer pencils when they're doing their schoolwork.

- ROBIN GIVHAN

And when play time comes around, they’ll have to be satisfied with fewer dolls. This is the observation of their president, who has been cranking tariffs up and down like a thermostat as he runs hot and cold on allies, antagonists and his own standing with the public.

US President Donald Trump offered this assessment in response to questions about the possibility of rising prices and empty store shelves and just how much financial uncertainty and pain Americans should expect.

His answer targeted a kind of modest excess that might be considered part of the American Dream the freedom of parents to buy their kids an abundance of toys and not have to worry about where their next #2 pencil is coming from.

"I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable," Trump said during an interview with NBC.

He'd upped his allotment from the previous count of two since he’d first used dolls as a measure of economic stability, in April. Within four days, he had become practically profligate with doll distribution.

"I'm just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. "

“They don’t need to have 250 pencils,” he added. “They can have five.”

While that would be a fine argument against over-consumption, of which Americans are plenty guilty, it comes from a president who treats garish excess as a matter of both national and personal pride. (See his re-decorating of the Oval Office into a gilded lair.)