“In the summer of 2024, a passage from J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy gained widespread attention on social media platforms, including X/​Twitter. Vance described his refrigerator from the 1980s, asserting that it preserved lettuce for weeks beyond the capabilities of contemporary models.

This was not just an offhanded comment by Vance, as he also said his takeaway from this anecdote is that ‘economics is fake.’ By ‘fake,’ he means that ‘we became less good at manufacturing in this country, too focused on low cost and not on durability.’ While Vance’s comment was in the context of antitrust policy and consumer choice, we can also interpret this within Vance and Trump’s broader policy agenda, which views international trade as, in many cases, a net harm to the US—including, in this case, for consumers (not just the alleged loss of manufacturing jobs). 

As we shall see, major appliances such as refrigerators have gotten both bigger and cheaper, though Vance would claim they are inferior in some other way (not preserving food as long).”

From Cato Institute.