Readers Write: Tariffs and the economy, Target, public health, Vietnam War

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Well, we knew this was coming. If the tariffs were successful, President Donald Trump would be shouting from the highest how great he is. Now that the Commerce Department has announced that the U.S. economy shrank an annual rate of 0.3% in the first quarter this year, Trump very quickly assumed his usual behavior of casting blame somewhere else (“Trump attempts to deflect blame for drop in U.S. GDP,” May 1). “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” he stated. And to prove how out of touch he is with Americans, he further went on to defend his tariffs on China by saying American kids may have “two dolls instead of 30.”

What about American kids getting shoes, clothes and food? Should we just tell those Americans that live paycheck to paycheck that for short-term pain we will have long-term gain? Either way it goes, Trump will either be claiming he won or point a finger at the previous administration. What hypocrisy.

Karen Watters, Stillwater

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“Two dolls instead of 30 dolls” sounds a lot like, “They have no bread? Then let them eat cake.” Do the ultrarich have a clue what it‘s like to live paycheck to paycheck, or after a layoff?

John Widen, Minneapolis

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Trump is holding the smoking gun of tariffs and standing over the body of the U.S. economy. True to form, he blames Biden. The man will never take responsibility for any of his actions.

Mike Thornton, Plymouth

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The tariff trade war may teach us some lessons that Trump summarized by saying children may have “two dolls instead of 30 dolls.” We simply already have too much stuff. Years ago we cleared out our parents’ house with over 60 years’ accumulation of stuff, a major job. My wife recently passed away, and I have been cleaning out the excess of 40 years’ accumulation so the kids won’t have to.

It is amazing what little you can live with after the children move out and the grandchildren grow up. I made nine trips to thrift stores, which are bulging at the seams with good deals; many shop there especially in lean times on lean budgets. America has become too focused on materialism, comforts, fine foods and frequent entertainment. Most of us could live with less and donate the rest to those in need here and throughout the world. Make those two dolls your special dolls and appreciate the rest that life and eternity have to offer.

Michael Tillemans, Minneapolis

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I’m tired of hearing supporters of Trump say we should have known we’d have to make sacrifices to usher in an economic golden age (“Bumpy, but moving in the right direction,” Strib Voices, April 30). I don’t recall any mention of sacrifice during Trump’s campaign, and I would love to see a list of the sacrifices made by Trump and his billionaire buddies.

Everett Tollerud, Eagan

My wife and I are deeply disappointed in the leadership of Target to: 1) abandon its DEI initiatives in the face of political pressure from the Trump administration; and 2) make a $1 million contribution to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund (“Target donated $1M to Trump’s inauguration fund,” April 30). This is not leadership that we can respect or support through investment or consumer spending.

I am not suggesting that DEI programs are perfect; they are not. But it is one thing to defend the DEI programs they have adopted and work to reform them and quite another to denounce and abandon them in the face of political pressure from the Trump administration. The same is true for the political contribution to the inauguration fund. It is one thing for the officers and directors of a corporation to personally vote for and support a political party or candidate but quite another for a publicly held corporation with a consumer business model to do so and then to do so in response to what amounts to a mafia-style shakedown to do business in this country. Well, that‘s a bridge too far for us.

As investors and consumers, we all have choices to make. Sometimes those choices are driven by price or convenience or product selection, and sometimes they are driven by principles. Let‘s just say that it‘s a good thing that Trump and his family can shop at Target, because our family will not be.

David R. Witte, Plymouth

Thank you for the article on “Team D” and other community grants impacted by the end of “COVID funding” (“Trump’s cuts dump on Minnesota’s ‘Team Diarrhea,’” StarTribune.com, April 30). In addition to the bad pun in the headline, I also appreciated the reference to Oregon Trail and the point that no one voted for Trump because they want to die of dysentery.

Though many will say we can end the funding because COVID is over, the article correctly points out that the impact of these cuts goes much farther.

On May 1, I plan to spend the day at the Southeast Minnesota Immunization Connection annual conference. For over a decade, this collaboration of 11 counties has provided hundreds of medical professionals a regular opportunity to learn about best practices that protect Minnesotans from a whole host of diseases. But the conference is also supported by funding that will now run out in June.

When public health works, no one seems to notice it, but I fear the impact of these changes may become all too evident all too soon. Preventable outbreaks and epidemics could be stopped in the final weeks of the state legislative session.

Elected officials would be wise to review these local grants, many of which provide direct support to rural Minnesota, and reflect on the opportunity to replace federal dollars with state funds. There is still time to grab a plunger and prevent the toilets from overflowing.

Matt Flory, Minneapolis

To read University of Minnesota Duluth Prof. Scott Laderman’s account of the Vietnam War, one would think only America was there, unilaterally making war on the hapless citizens of Vietnam (“The U.S. and Vietnam, five decades on,” Strib Voices, April 30). According to Laderman, the Vietnam War was an “an American invasion” and marked exclusively by “U.S. aggression.” This American invasion must be remembered for the “tragedies we [the United States] inflict[ed].” And these American tragedies are even worse because millions of people “lost their lives ... to the American military campaign.”

To accept Laderman’s narrow view of history, you would be forced to ignore the existence of 400,000 regular North Vietnamese soldiers actively attacking anyone in the South, or the over 200,000 Viet Cong terrorists busy raiding villages and routinely killing the residents. Nor were there any Chinese armaments to be found anywhere in the country. And certainly, there weren’t any Soviet pilots flying those Soviet Mig aircraft. In the professor’s recounting, only America was systematically destroying a country that, ironically, America had pledged to protect from the Communists.

And regarding that Vietnamese museum that the professor intentionally doesn’t identify: Here is my $10 bet to the professor‘s favorite charity that the unnamed museum is actually the War Remnants Museum wholly operated by the Ho Chi Minh City government. (It was previously titled “Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression” and “Exhibition House for U.S. and Puppet Crimes.”) Its very existence confirms again the old saw that history is written by the victors.

But for me, as both a Vietnam veteran and a lifelong Minnesota taxpayer, there is one silver lining from reading Laderman’s worn-out and hard-left view of the war. I’ll be forever grateful that my youngest was rejected by UMD for enrollment. Instead, he graduated, with honors and a five-year degree in choral leadership from a very fine Wisconsin school.

Terry Larkin, Deephaven, Minn.