Consumer sentiment has hit an all-time low in America as the promises of Trumpenomics like a flood of tariff wealth, slashed income taxes, and lower prices are washed away by the tides of war, low growth, bad math, and money printing.
Politicians want to be good at math when it serves them, and terrible at it when it doesn’t. Trump’s tariffs never had a hope of adding up to anywhere near the levels needed to balance the budget or eliminate income tax, as promised. Consumers are broke, tired, indebted, and politically exhausted. That’s why consumer sentiment is lower than it has ever been since the University of Michigan began publishing its Michigan Survey of Consumers in the 1970s.
Inflation has proven sticky, with the money supply expanding and the war machine ramping up in the Middle East, even as our other wars fall into the background of the news cycle.
Rather than return America to prosperity, tariffs have created uncertainty, friction, and higher prices for Americans while incentivizing foreign countries to accelerate their efforts to ditch the dollar.
Politicians hope they can lift the mood with wealth redistribution schemes that ignore the real problems. The Working Americans Tax Cut Act claims to “reduce taxes,” when all it really does is changes who gets charged, and how much. All gifts from the government are taken from someone else, and with Americans constantly being robbed by the money printer through inflation, they may be starting to catch on that there are no free lunches, and lower taxes can’t fix the problem of a dollar that’s becoming increasingly worthless.
The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment crashed to 47.6 in preliminary April 2026 readings, shattering the previous record low set in mid-2022. The current conditions sub-index plunged to 50.1, also a record low, while expectations for the year ahead cratered even harder. Consumers aren’t just pessimistic about the present; they see no relief coming, “tax cuts” be damned.
University of Michigan: Consumer Sentiment (5-Year)