Top Trump official Kevin Hassett blames 'Michigan people' for souring consumer confidence survey

[Eugene]

Source: MSNBC

Top Trump official blames ‘Michigan people’ for souring consumer confidence survey

Consumer sentiment has plummeted, but the director of the National Economic Counsel said it’s liberals manipulating the numbers.

March 14, 2025, 5:17 PM EDT
By Ja'han Jones

Recent data from the University of Michigan shows consumer confidence in the economy has plummeted to its lowest level since 2022, as prices rise and stocks fall in response to Donald Trump’s unnecessary and rudderless trade war.

The stumbling stock market and all the understandable worries about it are not a liberal conspiracy theory. The Fox News universe has been trying to prepare Trump supporters for economic pain as a consequence of his policies. But rather than grapple with that reality, Team Trump is trying to confine the American public to a fantasyland of its own creation, baselessly blaming the tanking economy on former President Joe Biden.

And, in at least one instance, suggesting the low consumer confidence is actually a fabrication of people with an axe to grind. Kevin Hassett, Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, faced some pushback on Fox News, of all places, after he downplayed host Martha MacCallum’s question about what evidence he could offer that consumer confidence was improving. Hassett said:

The thing that I care most about is the hard data. The consumer confidence numbers can sometimes fluctuate around elections, for example, because of people whose party lost or are really in a bad mood and they say, ‘Oh, things are just terrible. You know, the guy I didn’t vote for is gonna destroy the economy.’ But then, when it doesn’t happen, people get around. So I don’t actually put a lot of faith in the consumer confidence numbers right around election time.

The proposition that Trump’s policies might hurt the economy isn’t liberal propaganda. ...
-snip-

Read more: https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-tariffs-consumer-confidence-rcna196513

[BOSSHOG]

1. Sure it is

Because members of the party of responsibility never take responsibility for bad outcomes. We are not “around election time.” Consumer confidence is a direct result of action by trump and his minions. For what purpose, who the fuck knows? I’ll hazard a guess. It’s far worse than pee tapes.

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. Does Putin have pics of our TS Inteeligence? You betcha.

That's way better than simple weird sex/pee play tapes.

[progree]

3. Consumer Sentiment: Nov:71.8, Dec:74.0, Jan:71.7, Feb:64.7, Mar:57.9

So much for the "around an election" theory. It went up substantially from November to December and then slipped back to essentially its November level in January. After that, it fell sharply.

Someone in another thread asked why the consumer sentiment was still above 50%?

Ans: It's not a percentage. Rather it's some score that is indexed to 1966 = 100

http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

Chart: http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsr.pdf

Better chart from finance.yahoo.com:


Here's one going back 50 years:
http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsh.pdf

Another going back to 2003 (22 years) is in this article:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-sour-on-economy-as-inflation-expectations-hit-highest-level-since-1991-145631578.html

====================================================

12 month inflation expectation: from 3.3% in January to 4.3% in February to 4.9% in March,

5 year inflation expectation: from 3.5% in February to 3.9% in March (I'd have to dig for the January number, and earlier numbers)

A headline says that the inflation expectation is at a 34 year high (this happens around every election time I guess, because of sore losers I guess).
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-sour-on-economy-as-inflation-expectations-hit-highest-level-since-1991-145631578.html

Pessimism over the inflation outlook soared again in March as one year-inflation expectations jumped to 4.9% from 4.3% the month prior. Just two months ago, consumers had only expected inflation of 3.3% over the next year.

Long-run inflation expectations, which track expectations over the next five to 10 years, climbed, too, hitting 3.9% in March, up from 3.4% in February. This marks the highest level of long-term inflation expectations since 1991. Also in the release, the expected change in unemployment hit its lowest level since the Great Financial Crisis.

There's a graph of the 5-10 year inflation expectation too at the finance.yahoo link above, as well as one of the Consumer Sentiment that's better than the one embedded above because it goes back to 2003.