Tariffs dent confidence
Analysts say recent tariff actions helped push the S&P 500 into a sharp April sell-off before a partial rebound and have contributed to unusually weak consumer sentiment. One analysis reports markets oscillating on hopes of a 90-day tariff pause while a separate piece says U.S. consumer sentiment is at its worst in roughly fifty years, with tariffs and uncertainty blamed for the drop. (webanditnews.com) (webanditnews.com)
Tariffs jolted Wall Street and rattled households in early April, sending stocks into a violent swing and consumer sentiment down to one of its weakest readings on record. (whitehouse.gov) (kitco.com) President Donald Trump signed a reciprocal tariff order on April 2, 2025, then raised pressure on China after Beijing announced an 84% tariff on U.S. goods effective April 10. A White House order on April 9 said the United States was modifying duties on Chinese imports after that retaliation. (whitehouse.gov 1) (whitehouse.gov 2) Markets lurched with each policy turn. On April 9, the Standard and Poor’s 500 jumped 9.5% after Trump announced a 90-day pause on many country-specific tariff hikes, then fell almost 3.5% on April 10 after the White House clarified that total U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods had risen to 145%. (finance.yahoo.com 1) (finance.yahoo.com 2) By April 11, the Standard and Poor’s 500 had rebounded 1.8% for the day, but the week still ended as a test of how quickly tariff headlines could move stocks, Treasury yields and the dollar. The 10-year Treasury yield closed around 4.5% that day, the dollar index fell below 100, and gold climbed past $3,200 an ounce. (finance.yahoo.com) The same tariff fight showed up in household surveys. The University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer sentiment index fell to 50.8 in April from 57.0 in March, the lowest reading since June 2022 and the second-lowest in records going back to 1952, according to Reuters and Semafor. (kitco.com) (semafor.com) Consumers also said they expected faster price increases. Reuters reported one-year inflation expectations jumped to 6.7% in April from 5.0% in March, the highest since 1981, while five-year expectations rose to 4.4%, the highest since 1991. (kitco.com) Joanne Hsu, who directs the Michigan survey, said sentiment had fallen more than 30% since December 2024 as worries about trade policy spread across age, income, region and party. Reuters said the survey was completed on April 8, before Trump’s latest tariff changes on April 9 and China’s April 11 move to raise its tariff on U.S. goods to 125%. (semafor.com) (kitco.com) Trump kept a 10% blanket tariff on most imports even while pausing some higher country-specific rates for 90 days, and separate 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum also remained in place. That left investors and consumers trying to price not one tariff move, but several at once. (kitco.com) (finance.yahoo.com) That is why the April story split in two at once: stocks bounced on every hint of a pause, while households told surveyors they were bracing for higher prices, weaker job prospects and more uncertainty. By the end of the week, tariffs had become both a market headline and a kitchen-table one. (finance.yahoo.com) (kitco.com)
