Vendors who made a fortune hawking Donald Trump’s tacky MAGA merch are lamenting a collapse in sales during his flailing second term as president.
Donald “Whitey” Taylor, 76, told the Wall Street Journal that the president’s return to the White House has sent profits plummeting at his Trump Town USA store in Boones Mill, Virginia.
“You get used to good money, and you still want to make it,” he said. “Today, the economy is just not worth a c--p anymore.”
Taylor could rake in north of $15,000 on any given day throughout 2024, which he told the newspaper marked his store’s best pace of business since he set up shop more than a decade ago.
Now, he says that daily rate has dropped 90 percent to just $1,500, as a direct result of pain at the pump sparked by 80-year-old Trump’s war of choice with Iran. The president’s persistent failure to tackle inflation, along with his miserable approval ratings, hasn’t helped either.
Taylor isn’t alone. The Journal spoke with a raft of other vendors in the MAGA merchandising world, all of whom said they’re feeling the squeeze.
The lack of enthusiasm among the MAGA base has even forced some outlets to shutter altogether. An employee at the Trump Store in Manchester, Tennessee, told the newspaper that even massive discounts failed to clear its remaining inventory, drawing only 12 customers on each of the three days before it finally closed.
Suppliers, many of whom buy their goods from manufacturers in China, are now scrambling to adjust to the sales slump. Quan Ngo, who works with a souvenir wholesaler out of Washington, D.C., said the outlet has scaled right back on Trump merch.
“We don’t make decisions off of emotions, we make them off of certainty and whether there is a demand,” Ngo told the Journal. “We’ve ordered less Trump merchandise because demand is down.”
Independent vendor Lisa Hall, of Syracuse, New York, says the collapse started about six months ago. Demand for MAGA-branded clothing began to slacken after Trump retook office, then crashed hard after he kicked off the war on Iran at the end of February.
“I used to be hearing from them; my phone would be exploding,” she said of her clients. “Now, that’s not happening.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
