How Trump's trade war has forced me to rediscover my hidden superpower

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 hours ago

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.'