![\"White](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/gettyimages-2251420607.jpg?c=original&q=w_1280,c_fill\/f_avif\")
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\n White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt grew defensive over the White House\u2019s handling of the economy in exchanges with reporters Thursday, standing by President Donald Trump\u2019s comments that parents should \u201cgive up\u201d certain products this Christmas if they have affordability concerns and insisting things have improved under Trump\u2019s watch.\n <\/p>\n
\n The exchange kicked off when CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins asked about Trump\u2019s comment Tuesday to an audience in Pennsylvania about cutting back on purchases. \u201cYou don\u2019t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice,\u201d the president said.\n <\/p>\n
\n If the economy was as strong as Trump suggested, Collins asked, why was he telling parents their kids only needed two or three dolls?\n <\/p>\n
\n Leavitt responded that Americans may have to pay \u201ca dollar or two more\u201d for some products, but would see better quality by buying American.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhat the president is saying is that if we want products made right here in America, if we want them to be made from American small businesses, which is a large part of the reason the president has effectively implemented tariffs, then we\u2019re going to have better quality products right here in the United States,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Leavitt then criticized press coverage of affordability concerns, claiming incorrectly<\/a> that <\/a>reporters<\/a> did not cover inflation under the previous administration, as she sought to push back on questions from Collins and CBS\u2019s Nancy Cordes about the current state of the economy.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe president inherited 2.9% in January, today, it\u2019s at about 2.5%, so we\u2019re trending in the right direction with more to come,\u201d she said. \u201cNobody reported on it being high under Biden, my predecessor was standing at this podium. But now you want to ask me a lot of questions about it, which I\u2019m happy to answer, but I will just add, there\u2019s a lot more scrutiny on this issue from this press corps than there was.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Inflation has been accelerating since the spring, CNN reported last month<\/a>. As of September, the year-over-year inflation rate had increased for five consecutive months<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n The September rate, 3%, was the same as the rate in January, when Trump returned to the White House.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt grew defensive over the White House\u2019s handling of the economy in exchanges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-343442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}