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American buyers reduce expenses and feeling slides while President Donald Trump’s prices and market volatility threaten to undermine one of the main drivers of the world’s largest economy.
Many retailers have declared solid sales at the end of last year, but warned slower growth in 2025, and industry data show that their forecasts are already taking place.
The frequentation of American stores dropped 4.3% over a year in early March, according to Retailnext, advice – extending the decreases that started at the start of the year. Place.ai, which brings together the signals of mobile consumer devices, has recorded fewer visits to large -area stores, including Walmart, Target and Best Buy in recent weeks.
Friday The feeling of feeling of consumers of the University of Michigan recorded its third consecutive monthly decline and the lowest reading since November 2022. Inflation expectations increased, also showed the survey.
Trump refused to exclude a recessionWhile the recent stock market stock market has broken the investment portfolios of richer Americans that propel American consumption.
“The consumer is barring so many different elements,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at Circana, who compiles retail purchase data. “It is easier for the consumer to step back and say:” I’m going to go out and wait and see what’s going on. ”
The American federal reserve is expected to keep the interest rates pending at its meeting this week, and the president of the Fed, Jay Powell, recently minimized the concerns about growth, saying that the American Central Bank “did not need to be pressed” to reduce rates.
But investors are increasingly concerned about the fact that the development of Trump’s erratic policies, marked by a series of sudden towers, disrupts businesses and slows growth. Wall Street benchmark Benchmark S&P 500 index fell on the correction territory this week, before retreating.
Consumer expenses was a key engine of the economic recovery of the United States of the coco-19 cocovated pandemic, exceeding Europe and other major economies.
But household budgets were extended during the following period of high inflation. In response, consumers have carried out expenses, reducing sales volumes for product companies wrapped in consumers. Low -income consumers have felt the most tension.
Sales of discretionary general goods dropped by 3% during the week ending on March 8 compared to last year, continuing a series of annual declines in February, Circana data showed.
Traffic to us, fast food restaurants was down 2.8% in February, according to income management solutions, with breakfast visits by two figures. “This is the easiest meal to prepare at home or jump completely,” said the council.
Four major American airlines have warned a Slowness of demandpartly due to a dismissal of leisure travelers.
This month, Target declared a drop in sales in February and warned of Pressures on profits This quarter partly due to “pricing uncertainty”.
Some consumers are also boycott The retailer based in Minneapolis after having withdrawn the commitments of the diversity of companies. Target leaders refused to confirm whether the boycotts had an effect.
Analysts said economic anxiety had a greater impact than boycott on retail sales, for which official government data should be published on Monday.
Lauren Hobart, director general of Dick’s Sporting Goods, told analysts this week that he was “absolutely not the case” that consumers were lower. However, its channel provides for sales growth with comparable stores from 1 to 3% this year, slower than its increase of 5.2% in 2024.
“Our advice simply reflect the fact that there is so much uncertainty in the world today in the geopolitical environment, the macroeconomic environment. We are just in prudent appropriate, ”said Hobart.
Although inflation has weighed on American consumers for months, their anxiety has not always resulted in lower expenses. Almost 1 tn of sales During the holiday shopping season last year, expectations have gone out of expectations.
“Consumers say they intend to withdraw,” Tom Kilroy, a main partner at McKinsey, told an industry conference in New York this week. “But what we have also seen in the past year is that they have not always followed this intention with action.”
