America's economy is now bouncing wildly as nearly 80% of consumers—both the paycheck-to-paycheck crowd and the supposedly comfortable—are slashing spending in anticipation of tariff impacts that haven't even fully hit yet, potentially draining $92 billion from retail spending. 🕹️ Karen Webster's latest article is a great read, and dives into what economic uncertainty and pinball have in common. #tariffs #economy #consumerbehavior
After taking an early look at the latest PYMNTS Intelligence Paycheck to Paycheck data last Friday, I was compelled to break the news before the official report release. Bottom line. Americans are worried, and signaled their concerns even in the weeks before Liberation Day and the hefty sales tax that its tariffs will impose on every consumer and every business in the world in some way. A national study of 2,820 consumers conducted between March 12 and March 31 finds that then, nearly 80% of consumers were already pulling back by buying less or buying cheaper. Back of the envelope math suggests that could dent the US economy by $92B every year assuming just a 2% pullback. If prices increase by 10%, 18% of consumers say they will simply stop buying, increasing that even more. We’ll let you know what they say now that the reality is even worse then they imagined just a couple of weeks ago. Then, there’s the business uncertainty, which we captured by studying heads of product and CFOs of middle market companies. A third of those companies are facing supply chain disruption, higher prices, missed opportunities and hits to sales and margins. More than half of consumer and industrial goods companies say the same. This week I was also compelled to try to find an analogy that might help to explain the chaos that the markets – and all of us by default - are experiencing. In that I found the good old fashioned game of pinball. I’ll let you read the piece to connect those dots, or pull the levers, as the case may be. Would love to know what you think. And what you are seeing and hearing from friends, family and business colleagues. Thanks for reading. And thanks to Mariah Warner, PhD, Scott Murray, Yvonni Markaki and the PYMNTS Intelligence team for their insightful analysis.
