{"id":962,"date":"2025-04-22T22:43:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T22:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/umich-survey-shows-a-decline-in-consumer-sentiment\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T22:43:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T22:43:28","slug":"umich-survey-shows-a-decline-in-consumer-sentiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/22\/umich-survey-shows-a-decline-in-consumer-sentiment\/","title":{"rendered":"UMich survey shows a decline in consumer sentiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sca.isr.umich.edu\/\">study<\/a> by the <a href=\"https:\/\/data.sca.isr.umich.edu\/\">Surveys of Consumers<\/a> at the University of Michigan shows a drastic decline in consumer sentiment as inflation fears rise following President Donald Trump\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tradecomplianceresourcehub.com\/2025\/04\/18\/trump-2-0-tariff-tracker\/\"> tariffs<\/a> on most countries. The study, led by director Joanne Hsu, was published April 11. The monthly web survey sampled U.S. adults across a wide range of ages, races, political beliefs and socioeconomic statuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Consumer sentiment has been declining for four consecutive months, reaching 77.2% in April, a 10.9% decrease from March. The U.S. has seen a rise in inflation expectations, surging from 5% in March to 6.7% this month, which remains the highest reading since 1981. However, currently there are few indicators of future inflation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Hsu said consumers\u2019 spending has significant impacts on the national economy and consumer attitudes are a strong indicator of future economic changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConsumers really are the engine of the national economy,\u201d Hsu said. \u201cThe 75+ years of data collection have shown that consumer attitudes are a pretty strong predictor of where the economy is going to go. When sentiment tanks, a recession tends to follow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Hsu states the most surprising information from her research is that the perception the economy is deteriorating is not limited to Democrats. Across the political spectrum, Hsu found people with a diverse\/varying range of political beliefs have remained consistently concerned over the last four months about potential rises in inflation and unemployment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLooking at Republicans alone, even they are seeing a deterioration in the economic outlook over the last couple of months,\u201d Hsu said. \u201cThis is the case even though they tend to see the economy more favorably right now because most of them are kind of in agreement with the White House\u2019s policies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This data raises concerns for policymakers as the country enters a <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/tariffs-timeline-trade-war-trump-canada-mexico-china-a9d714eea677488ef9397547d838dbd0\">trade war<\/a>. In an interview with The Daily, professor of economics Basit Zafar stated consumer sentiments have a direct impact on people\u2019s views of the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConsumer sentiment interacts with political sentiments,\u201d Zafar said. \u201cFor example, sentiment typically improves in Republican-leaning areas after a Republican wins the presidential election and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The current consumer sentiment presents challenges for the federal government as it seeks to balance stabilizing inflation and maximizing employment. Hsu described concerns that an economic downturn might occur if consumers stop spending at the same level as they make up a significant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/economy\/consumers-cut-spending-by-most-in-four-years-last-month\">percentage<\/a> of the national economy.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cPeople are feeling not only concerned about inflation, but also about their own incomes, and they\u2019re worried they might lose their job, which is something that we\u2019re seeing in our data right now as well. They\u2019re not going to be willing to spend at the robust levels that we have been seeing from 2022 to 2024,\u201d Hsu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, LSA freshman Maansi Kandula noted recent changes she has made to her spending habits as an out-of-state student.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve become increasingly more aware of my spending habits,\u201d Kandula said. \u201cOut-of-state tuition is already a big financial commitment for my family. There is so much financial uncertainty right now, and I am scared that tuition is going to rise in the upcoming years. I\u2019ve started budgeting and trying to save as much as I can.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Contributor Gia Verma can be reached at giaverma@umich.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study by the Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan shows a drastic decline in consumer sentiment as inflation fears rise following President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs on most countries. The study, led by director Joanne Hsu, was published April 11. The monthly web survey sampled U.S. adults across a wide range of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[1076,1075,1077,172,1074,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-consumer","9":"tag-decline","10":"tag-sentiment","11":"tag-shows","12":"tag-survey","13":"tag-umich"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}