Recently, Donald Trump mused that “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” We talk with a doll manufacturer and a policy analyst about tariffs and Americans’ relationship with choice. Elenor Mak, founder of Jilly Bing, talks about her dream of giving Asian American kids the choice of having a doll that looks like them, and how the new tariffs might kill it. And Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale, discusses the problem with this particular variety of two-doll nostalgia. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What sparked the conversation about dolls and tariffs?
Last week, at a cabinet meeting, while answering a question about tariffs, President Donald Trump mentioned dolls.
Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. But we're not talking about...
Now, this wasn't any deep social commentary, just an offhand statement. But it did get me thinking about how kids today, including my own, do have a million dolls. Versus, say, when I was a kid. Do you remember your first doll?
Oh, of course. My first doll was Ada. I took Ada with me everywhere, like to the park, to dim sum. I tried to bring her to school. But I also remember she was beautiful in a way that I felt I never could be. This is Eleanor Mack. She had these beautiful blonde curls. She had big blue eyes. She had that porcelain skin.
And even then, you know, I think I was, you know, somewhere five or six years old, remember thinking, like, I wish I looked like Ada.
When Eleanor was a kid, like when I was a kid, what she didn't have was that much choice. But even after Eleanor grew up and had her own kids, the options were still pretty meh. There were basically blonde dolls, some brunettes, and some that Eleanor describes as, quote, vaguely Asian.
You're not really sure what they're supposed to be. And the only reason I knew some of these dolls were intended to be Asian was because they had a name like Ling, or they were holding panda bears or had a really bad haircut. Right. Like that bowl cut my mom did give me. But as an Asian-American mother, like I don't relate to any of that.
So when Eleanor had her daughter, she did not want her to have the bowl cut model. She wanted a doll that her child could actually relate to. So Eleanor did the thing that most people do not do. Oh, of course. She started a company to make her own dolls. It's called Jilly Bing, partly named after her daughter Jillian.
Jillian is now five, Jilly Jillian.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Eleanor Mak to create Jilly Bing dolls?
Yes, because with the current tariffs, there's just, I cannot survive.
That was Eleanor Mack, founder of the doll company Jilly Bing. After the break, the other side of the equation, us, the consumers, our coffee, our toasters, our cars, our assumption that all things are available to us instantly. That's in a moment.
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My name is Martha Gimbel. I'm the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale, which is a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes the impacts of federal economic policies.
So, Martha, I know the Budget Lab has been busy telling up how Trump's tariffs are going to change the prices of all kinds of goods for Americans. I myself am thinking about the long term, like how our consumer culture around cheap products might change. But first, I want to talk about some specifics. We just talked to an independent doll manufacturer. So I want to use that industry as an example.
Say it's my kid's birthday coming up and I want to buy them a doll. What is the landscape I'm looking at?
It's not ideal, I think, is the technical term. We just don't produce that many toys in the United States anymore. And, you know, I think people sometimes get a little bit itchy about that and they think, oh, we should be making things in the good old USA. Right. But that makes things much more expensive.
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