Americans are feeling very anxious over Trump's boneheaded tariffs
President Donald Trump's foolish and chaotic economic policy is paralyzing the economy and causing consumer sentiment to plummet—ratcheting up the odds that the United States descends into a full-blown recession, experts said Friday.
The warnings came as the University of Michigan said that consumer sentiment dramatically fell in March, dropping 12% from February as consumers of all political stripes said they expect the economy to get worse in the coming year, according to data released by the University of Michigan.
“Republicans joined independents and Democrats in expressing worsening expectations since February for their personal finances, business conditions, unemployment, and inflation,” the University of Michigan said in its monthly survey of consumers. “Consumers continue to worry about the potential for pain amid ongoing economic policy developments. Notably, two-thirds of consumers expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead, the highest reading since 2009.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta said Friday that it expects the U.S. economy will have shrunk 2.8% in the first three months of 2024—marking a steep decline since Trump took office, when the bank predicted the economy would continue on a growth trajectory.
Even worse is that inflation ticked up in February for the fourth straight month, increasing 0.4% even before Trump's idiotic tariffs go into place—which economists say will only worsen the price increases.
Ultimately, the new data points have economists fearing that Trump's policies are going to send the economy off a cliff as both companies and consumers scale back because they are spooked by Trump's chaos.
“There is no other conclusion possible other than the Trump 2.0 economic policies are frightening consumers as much as they do corporations,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, CNN reported. “The economy is going to stall out if not something worse if Washington policymakers are not careful.”
Meanwhile, Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long said that consumer sentiment falling off a cliff could lead Americans to stop spending—which could plunge the economy into recession as the economy is largely dependent upon consumers opening their wallets.
"This is one of the scariest charts I've seen in awhile," Long wrote in a post on X of the consumer sentiment index. "In the 'vibe-cession' under Biden, people gave the economy poor grades. But they were generally optimistic about their personal finances (esp the rich). Under Trump 2025, people at all income levels are worried they will be worse off in a year. This is the type of situation that causes people to really pull back on spending. This is what is different than 2023 or 2024."
Forbes reported in February that consumer spending makes up about 70% of the U.S. economy. From the report:
When spending grows, so does the economy. The economy slows when consumers keep their money in their pockets. When spending increases, companies see more business and eventually need more help. As spending trails off, companies eventually postpone hiring. If markets get worse, executives eventually lay off workers.
So if consumers actually stop spending—either because of real or predicted price increases from Trump’s tariffs—that could lead to economic disaster.
Ultimately, amid the negative news about the economy, the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday plummeted more than 700 points as of press time, continuing the market's plunge that began when Trump first started announcing his tariff intentions.
“Republicans are raising costs, crashing the economy and driving us into a recession,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a post on X. “What happened to bringing about the golden age of America?”