Following President-elect Donald Trump’s historic comeback victory, consumer confidence in the United States has seen a sizable increase, in anticipation of pro-business policies that may ease the burden of the last four years of economic decline.
As Axios reports, the Morning Consult’s Consumer Sentiment Index reports consumer sentiment by measuring whether or not overall sentiment is above 100, indicating a positive outlook; anything below 100 is negative. The index saw its first increase since June of 2021, hitting 100.6 on November 11th, less than one week after President-elect Trump was declared the victor on November 5th.
Among Republicans, sentiment was down to 83 before the election before skyrocketing to 107.5 after Trump’s victory.
Despite attempts by pundits to claim that the economy was actually strong under Joe Biden, Americans overwhelmingly rejected these claims and continued expressing concern over their economic futures.
Ben Harris, Vice President of the Brookings Institution, tried to dismiss consumers’ sentiments and blame their negative outlook on politics, saying “it’s pretty clear politics was a big part of it.”
“The fact that macroeconomic indicators have become so divorced from consumer sentiment,” Harris continued, “it’s reasonable to ask, does this even matter from an economic standpoint anymore?”
So-called experts like Harris have pointed to the fact that, technically, unemployment remained low and inflation was decreasing. However, the unemployment figures do not take into account the number of Americans simply working part-time jobs, or working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. A common misconception about inflation is that a decreased rate means prices are decreasing, when in actuality, it simply means that prices are still rising, just at a slower rate than they were at the peak of inflation in 2022.