How Trump's trade war has forced me to rediscover my hidden superpower
Like many Americans, I've struggled with the whiplash of President Donald Trump's trade war.
Amid the gut punch of Liberation Day, I worried whether to dip into savings to panic-buy bananas, avocados and Parmesan Reggiano. (Ultimately, I resisted, but did stock up on coffee — I'm only human).
Since then, each head-spinning tariff update has reopened wounds of childhood material deprivation and pandemic scarcity. As a child, I skipped meals for lack of resources. I have since crafted my life to avoid ever worrying again about another bounced check or missed electric bill.
But it's hard to feel empowered in the face of chronic economic chaos.
Tariffs are already increasing the prices and availability of essential goods. The situation could become dire when tariffs start to impact access to medications that many Americans with chronic illnesses like me rely on. With my partner recently unemployed, I'm our household's sole earner. We're tracking every penny to make ends meet.
To cope, the religious side of me recites the Serenity Prayer: 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.'
As a sociologist, however, I search for opportunities for individual resistance, no matter how modest, to counter immense social forces.
Yes, there's much we can't control. But we can always do something. And lately, I'm discovering that something may be nothing.
I've resisted ransacking stores like a doomsday prepper, realizing that I possess a greater power than stuffing my shopping cart: my lifelong frugality.
I refuse to let the world's most powerful bully — our president — drive my behavior, nor let billionaires like Mark Cuban or media commentators dictate what I 'should' do, advising me to buy more and buy now.
I don't fault anyone's urgency to purchase that new phone, car or early Christmas gifts. But I'm buying as little as possible. And I invite you to join me.
In the spirit of never letting a serious crisis go to waste, as former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once wisely counseled, we shouldn't squander this crucial opportunity to modify our consumption habits and reassess what we need compared to what we want. We're overdue for a cultural reset when it comes to our dependence on cheap products and trends like fast fashion that pollute our environment by wasting huge amounts of water and energy while emitting greenhouse gases and leaving us choking on plastic. Those TikTok 'haul' videos come with a steep price.
Younger me rolled my eyes at calls to dial back consumerism, such as when a decades-older college classmate lamented the difficulty of finding her son sneakers made without overseas exploited labor.
But I grew up.
Now I'm that older woman worried about the human and environmental cost of inexpensive goods flooding our marketplace.
The truth is that some things shouldn't be so cheap.
Years ago, I remember feeling mildly horrified at the mountains of toys in my sister's home. I surmised she'd bought her kids everything we lacked growing up. But visiting friends with young children has confirmed that drowning in toys is now the hallmark of a typical middle-class American childhood.
Trump has made repeated statements about the number of dolls he thinks girls should have, saying, 'I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.'
Putting aside the ick factor of his patronizing language about gender, morally and logistically, I agree with reducing excess.
But that's the only nod I'll give him.
Kids will survive with fewer toys. But higher toy prices are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to China, or 'the country that makes all our stuff,' as comedian Stephen Colbert quipped. Imagine the absurd cruelty of telling older adults to survive on only a few of their prescription pills, which are also increasingly manufactured in China.
As for the nonessential stuff, I'm proud of my working-class family's survival strategies that I still employ. Growing up, we stretched, scrimped, repaired and saved. Dad scavenged furniture and books from the trash. Mom scoured supermarket sales to feed our family of six, creating a complex shopping list organized around deals from weekly loss leaders. She made everything from after-school snacks to Barbie's outfits. I clumsily sewed my own dresses to wear. Neighborhood mothers donated bags bursting with clothes their kids had outgrown. Thrift stores supplied everything else.
I have come to appreciate how this childhood spurred my imagination and creativity.
Though we struggled financially, I still learned to be a magician. Thinking and dreaming cost nothing. I conjured images out of thin air and changed reality with the power of my mind. Library books taught me how to be an escape artist, whisking me to faraway worlds.
Spending less, not due to necessity but choice, is a quiet yet powerful form of protest. The BuyNothing project, which aims to foster community through a gift economy, promotes a different form of wealth in the connections cultivated among neighbors. Right to repair laws and tool lending libraries can help protect us from obsolescence and forced replacement purchases.
We gain more collectively by sharing and giving than accumulating things that clutter our homes and clog our landfills.
One of my heroes, photographer Bill Cunningham, famously declined food and drink while working events, explaining, 'Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty is the most expensive.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
15 minutes ago
- CNN
How Trump quietly made the historic decision to launch strikes in Iran
By the time President Donald Trump was milling about his golf club in New Jersey on Friday evening, the planes were about to be in the air. To onlookers at the club, Trump showed little anxiety about his decision to authorize airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities that could have profound ramifications both on US national security and his own presidential legacy. The B-2 stealth bombers carrying 30,000-pound bunker busters were preparing to take off at midnight from their base in Missouri, destined for Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Another set of planes was heading west, a deliberate attempt at misdirection as Trump demanded complete secrecy for his momentous decision. As Trump escorted around Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, to an event for new members being held in one of the clubhouse's dining rooms, he was loose and — at least in public — in an easygoing mood, people who saw him said. 'I hope he's right about the AI,' Trump joked at one point, gesturing to his guest. Twenty-four hours later, Trump was in the basement Situation Room at the White House, wearing a red 'Make America Great Again' hat as he watched the strikes he had approved days earlier, codenamed 'Operation Midnight Hammer,' play out in real time on the facility's wall of monitors. 'Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,' he said a few hours later during late-night remarks from the White House Cross Hall. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' The decision to go ahead with strikes thrusts the United States directly into the Middle East conflict, raising worries about Iranian reprisals and questions about Trump's endgame. It came after days of public deliberation, as Trump alternated between issuing militaristic threats against Iran on social media and holding private concerns that a military strike could drag the US into prolonged war. Yet by Thursday, the same day he instructed his press secretary to announce he was giving Iran two weeks to return to the negotiating table before deciding on a strike, allies who spoke to him said it was clear that the decision was already made. Speaking on NBC Sunday, Vice President JD Vance said Trump retained the ability to call off the strikes 'until the very last minute.' But he elected to go ahead. Administration officials went to great lengths to conceal their planning. Deferring the strike decision for a fortnight appeared in keeping with the mission's attempts at diversion – a tactic designed to obscure the attack plans, even though Trump held off giving a final go-ahead until Saturday, according to senior US officials. By the end of the week, US officials had come to believe Iran was not ready to return to the table and strike a satisfactory nuclear deal after Europeans leaders met with their Iranian counterparts on Friday, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Trump's two-week public deadline lasted only 48 hours before he took one of the most consequential actions of his presidency. The operation began at midnight ET Friday, with the B-2 bombers launching from Missouri on an 18-hour journey that was the planes' longest mission in more than two decades, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a Sunday morning Pentagon briefing. 'This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president of the United States called,' Hegseth said alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. 'It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security.' Discussions about potential options for American strikes on Iran began in earnest between Trump and members of his national security team during a weekend retreat at Camp David in early June, where CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed Trump on US assessments that Israel was prepared to imminently begin strikes. The options for Trump to join Israel in its campaign had been drawn up in the months beforehand, with the president's advisers having already worked out differences among themselves over what options were on the menu for him to decide from. In the week before he made the final call for US stealth bombers and Navy submarines to target three Iranian nuclear sites, Trump held briefings each day with his national security team in the basement Situation Room to discuss attack plans — and to weigh the potential consequences. Trump came to the secret talks with two principal concerns: that a US attack be decisive in taking out the highly fortified sites, including the underground Fordow enrichment facility; and that any action he took did not pull the US into the type of prolonged, deadly war he promised to avoid as a candidate. On the first point, officials were confident in the US bunker-busting bombs' ability to penetrate the facility, even though such an action hadn't been tested previously. Caine said Sunday that the initial assessment shows 'extremely severe damage and destruction' to Iran's three nuclear sites, though he noted it will take time to determine the ultimate impact to the country's nuclear capabilities. (Iranian officials downplayed the impact of the US strikes to their nuclear facilities on Sunday.) But on the second question of a prolonged war, officials could hardly promise the president that Iran's reprisals — which could include targeting American assets or personnel in the region — wouldn't draw the US into a new quagmire. 'As the president has directed, made clear, this is most certainly not open-ended,' Hegseth said Sunday. 'Doesn't mean it limits our ability to respond. We will respond if necessary.' The uncertainly seemed to give Trump pause, and throughout the week he said in public he hadn't yet made a decision, even if behind the scenes it appeared to Trump's advisers that his mind was made up. Trump departed his Bedminster golf club Saturday afternoon and returned to the White House for a scheduled 'national security meeting' — travel that was unusual for the president on a weekend but was previewed on his daily scheduled released the day prior. The US conveyed to Iran through back-channel discussions that the strikes Trump ordered Saturday would be contained and that no further strikes were planned going forward, according to two people familiar with the discussions. But Trump's public message Saturday night after the strikes — warning of 'far greater' future US attacks if Iran retaliates — underscored the unpredictable period he is entering in the Middle East. In April, Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran on a potential nuclear agreement, warning Tehran to strike a deal within 60 days – by mid-June. At the same time, Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on attacking Iran so he could give talks the time and space to show progress. A first round of talks was held in mid-April between the US and Tehran in Oman, led by Trump's foreign envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Despite optimistic notes sounded following the conversations, there was little progress toward an actual nuclear deal. On June 8 – less than a week before Trumps' 60-day deadline was set to expire – he huddled with his advisers at Camp David, where he was presented with potential options on Iran. The next day, Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone. Several weeks earlier, Netanyahu had told a group of US lawmakers that Israel was going to strike Iran — and he was not seeking permission from the US to do so. Sixty-one days after Trump's ultimatum, Israel launched unprecedented strikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear program and military leaders. 'Iran should have listened to me when I said — you know, I gave them, I don't know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61,' Trump told CNN's Dana Bash after the Israeli strikes began. But senior Trump officials also initially distanced themselves from the attack, issuing statements that Israel took unilateral action and the US was not involved. As Israel continued its military campaign in Israel, Trump traveled to Alberta, Canada, for a G-7 summit, only to return to Washington early 'because of what's going on in the Middle East,' the White House said. Trump spent much of the past week meeting in the Situation Room with his national security team to review attack plans and their potential consequences. On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement dictated by Trump: 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.' But there were signs that diplomacy was not moving forward. Witkoff made attempts at meeting his Iranian interlocutor, Araghchi, with little luck. Ater European leaders met with Iran's foreign minister on Friday in Geneva, US officials felt it appeared the Iranians would not sit down with the US without Trump asking Netanyahu to stop Israel's attacks — something Trump was not willing to do, sources said. That afternoon, on his way to his New Jersey club, Trump told reporters that his two-week timeframe was the 'maximum' amount of time, and he could make up his mind sooner. Ahead of Saturday's strikes, the US gave Israel a heads up it was going to attack. Netanyahu held a five-hour meeting with top Israeli officials that lasted through the US strikes, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone again afterward, and the Israeli prime minister praised the US attack in a video message, saying it was carried out 'with complete operational coordination between the IDF and the United States military.' The US had also notified some Gulf partners that it was ready to strike Iran within the coming days, but it did not specify targets and time frame, according to a source familiar with the matter. The message was delivered verbally, the source said, and there was a meeting at the White House where some of these Gulf partners were told. Trump and his team were in contact with top congressional Republicans before Saturday's strikes, but top Democrats were not told of his plans until after the bombs had dropped, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. Hegseth said Sunday that congressional leaders were notified 'immediately' after planes were out of Iranian airspace. The operation began at midnight Eastern Time Friday into Saturday morning. Caine said that B-2 bombers launched from the US, some headed West as a decoy while the rest 'proceeded quietly to the East with minimal communications throughout the 18-hour flight.' The unprecedented US operation involved seven stealth B2 bombers. All told, over 125 aircraft were involved, including the B2s, refueling tankers, reconnaissance planes and fighter jets. At approximately 5 p.m. ET, Caine said, a US submarine 'launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets' at the Isfahan nuclear site. And shortly after, at approximately 6:40 p.m. ET, or 2:10 a.m. local time, the lead B-2 bomber plane launched two bunker-buster bombs at Fordow nuclear site, Caine said, and the 'remaining bombers then hit their targets.' Those additional targets were struck, Caine said, 'between 6:40 p.m. ET and 7:05 p.m. ET.' The US military then 'began its return home,' Caine said, noting that no shots were fired by Iran at the US on the way in or out. After US planes had left Iranian airspace, Trump revealed the attack to the world on his social media platform, Truth Social. 'We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,' Trump wrote, adding that 'a full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.'
CNN
17 minutes ago
- CNN
How Trump quietly made the historic decision to launch strikes in Iran
By the time President Donald Trump was milling about his golf club in New Jersey on Friday evening, the planes were about to be in the air. To onlookers at the club, Trump showed little anxiety about his decision to authorize airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities that could have profound ramifications both on US national security and his own presidential legacy. The B-2 stealth bombers carrying 30,000-pound bunker busters were preparing to take off at midnight from their base in Missouri, destined for Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Another set of planes was heading west, a deliberate attempt at misdirection as Trump demanded complete secrecy for his momentous decision. As Trump escorted around Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, to an event for new members being held in one of the clubhouse's dining rooms, he was loose and — at least in public — in an easygoing mood, people who saw him said. 'I hope he's right about the AI,' Trump joked at one point, gesturing to his guest. Twenty-four hours later, Trump was in the basement Situation Room at the White House, wearing a red 'Make America Great Again' hat as he watched the strikes he had approved days earlier, codenamed 'Operation Midnight Hammer,' play out in real time on the facility's wall of monitors. 'Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,' he said a few hours later during late-night remarks from the White House Cross Hall. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' The decision to go ahead with strikes thrusts the United States directly into the Middle East conflict, raising worries about Iranian reprisals and questions about Trump's endgame. It came after days of public deliberation, as Trump alternated between issuing militaristic threats against Iran on social media and holding private concerns that a military strike could drag the US into prolonged war. Yet by Thursday, the same day he instructed his press secretary to announce he was giving Iran two weeks to return to the negotiating table before deciding on a strike, allies who spoke to him said it was clear that the decision was already made. Speaking on NBC Sunday, Vice President JD Vance said Trump retained the ability to call off the strikes 'until the very last minute.' But he elected to go ahead. Administration officials went to great lengths to conceal their planning. Deferring the strike decision for a fortnight appeared in keeping with the mission's attempts at diversion – a tactic designed to obscure the attack plans, even though Trump held off giving a final go-ahead until Saturday, according to senior US officials. By the end of the week, US officials had come to believe Iran was not ready to return to the table and strike a satisfactory nuclear deal after Europeans leaders met with their Iranian counterparts on Friday, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Trump's two-week public deadline lasted only 48 hours before he took one of the most consequential actions of his presidency. The operation began at midnight ET Friday, with the B-2 bombers launching from Missouri on an 18-hour journey that was the planes' longest mission in more than two decades, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a Sunday morning Pentagon briefing. 'This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president of the United States called,' Hegseth said alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. 'It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security.' Discussions about potential options for American strikes on Iran began in earnest between Trump and members of his national security team during a weekend retreat at Camp David in early June, where CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed Trump on US assessments that Israel was prepared to imminently begin strikes. The options for Trump to join Israel in its campaign had been drawn up in the months beforehand, with the president's advisers having already worked out differences among themselves over what options were on the menu for him to decide from. In the week before he made the final call for US stealth bombers and Navy submarines to target three Iranian nuclear sites, Trump held briefings each day with his national security team in the basement Situation Room to discuss attack plans — and to weigh the potential consequences. Trump came to the secret talks with two principal concerns: that a US attack be decisive in taking out the highly fortified sites, including the underground Fordow enrichment facility; and that any action he took did not pull the US into the type of prolonged, deadly war he promised to avoid as a candidate. On the first point, officials were confident in the US bunker-busting bombs' ability to penetrate the facility, even though such an action hadn't been tested previously. Caine said Sunday that the initial assessment shows 'extremely severe damage and destruction' to Iran's three nuclear sites, though he noted it will take time to determine the ultimate impact to the country's nuclear capabilities. (Iranian officials downplayed the impact of the US strikes to their nuclear facilities on Sunday.) But on the second question of a prolonged war, officials could hardly promise the president that Iran's reprisals — which could include targeting American assets or personnel in the region — wouldn't draw the US into a new quagmire. 'As the president has directed, made clear, this is most certainly not open-ended,' Hegseth said Sunday. 'Doesn't mean it limits our ability to respond. We will respond if necessary.' The uncertainly seemed to give Trump pause, and throughout the week he said in public he hadn't yet made a decision, even if behind the scenes it appeared to Trump's advisers that his mind was made up. Trump departed his Bedminster golf club Saturday afternoon and returned to the White House for a scheduled 'national security meeting' — travel that was unusual for the president on a weekend but was previewed on his daily scheduled released the day prior. The US conveyed to Iran through back-channel discussions that the strikes Trump ordered Saturday would be contained and that no further strikes were planned going forward, according to two people familiar with the discussions. But Trump's public message Saturday night after the strikes — warning of 'far greater' future US attacks if Iran retaliates — underscored the unpredictable period he is entering in the Middle East. In April, Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran on a potential nuclear agreement, warning Tehran to strike a deal within 60 days – by mid-June. At the same time, Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on attacking Iran so he could give talks the time and space to show progress. A first round of talks was held in mid-April between the US and Tehran in Oman, led by Trump's foreign envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Despite optimistic notes sounded following the conversations, there was little progress toward an actual nuclear deal. On June 8 – less than a week before Trumps' 60-day deadline was set to expire – he huddled with his advisers at Camp David, where he was presented with potential options on Iran. The next day, Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone. Several weeks earlier, Netanyahu had told a group of US lawmakers that Israel was going to strike Iran — and he was not seeking permission from the US to do so. Sixty-one days after Trump's ultimatum, Israel launched unprecedented strikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear program and military leaders. 'Iran should have listened to me when I said — you know, I gave them, I don't know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61,' Trump told CNN's Dana Bash after the Israeli strikes began. But senior Trump officials also initially distanced themselves from the attack, issuing statements that Israel took unilateral action and the US was not involved. As Israel continued its military campaign in Israel, Trump traveled to Alberta, Canada, for a G-7 summit, only to return to Washington early 'because of what's going on in the Middle East,' the White House said. Trump spent much of the past week meeting in the Situation Room with his national security team to review attack plans and their potential consequences. On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement dictated by Trump: 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.' But there were signs that diplomacy was not moving forward. Witkoff made attempts at meeting his Iranian interlocutor, Araghchi, with little luck. Ater European leaders met with Iran's foreign minister on Friday in Geneva, US officials felt it appeared the Iranians would not sit down with the US without Trump asking Netanyahu to stop Israel's attacks — something Trump was not willing to do, sources said. That afternoon, on his way to his New Jersey club, Trump told reporters that his two-week timeframe was the 'maximum' amount of time, and he could make up his mind sooner. Ahead of Saturday's strikes, the US gave Israel a heads up it was going to attack. Netanyahu held a five-hour meeting with top Israeli officials that lasted through the US strikes, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone again afterward, and the Israeli prime minister praised the US attack in a video message, saying it was carried out 'with complete operational coordination between the IDF and the United States military.' The US had also notified some Gulf partners that it was ready to strike Iran within the coming days, but it did not specify targets and time frame, according to a source familiar with the matter. The message was delivered verbally, the source said, and there was a meeting at the White House where some of these Gulf partners were told. Trump and his team were in contact with top congressional Republicans before Saturday's strikes, but top Democrats were not told of his plans until after the bombs had dropped, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. Hegseth said Sunday that congressional leaders were notified 'immediately' after planes were out of Iranian airspace. The operation began at midnight Eastern Time Friday into Saturday morning. Caine said that B-2 bombers launched from the US, some headed West as a decoy while the rest 'proceeded quietly to the East with minimal communications throughout the 18-hour flight.' The unprecedented US operation involved seven stealth B2 bombers. All told, over 125 aircraft were involved, including the B2s, refueling tankers, reconnaissance planes and fighter jets. At approximately 5 p.m. ET, Caine said, a US submarine 'launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets' at the Isfahan nuclear site. And shortly after, at approximately 6:40 p.m. ET, or 2:10 a.m. local time, the lead B-2 bomber plane launched two bunker-buster bombs at Fordow nuclear site, Caine said, and the 'remaining bombers then hit their targets.' Those additional targets were struck, Caine said, 'between 6:40 p.m. ET and 7:05 p.m. ET.' The US military then 'began its return home,' Caine said, noting that no shots were fired by Iran at the US on the way in or out. After US planes had left Iranian airspace, Trump revealed the attack to the world on his social media platform, Truth Social. 'We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,' Trump wrote, adding that 'a full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.'
Bloomberg
18 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Senate Can Keep Ban on State AI Rules in Trump Tax Bill
A Republican effort to block US states from enforcing new artificial intelligence regulations will remain in President Donald Trump's massive tax and spending package for now, marking a win for tech companies pushing to stall and override dozens of AI safety laws across the country. In a surprise decision, Democrats said the Senate parliamentarian ruled the provision aligns with the special budgetary process Republicans are using to consider the tax package. That process allows the GOP to avoid making concessions to Democrats, who otherwise could filibuster legislation.
