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US Consumer Sentiment Sinks as Tariffs Drive Price Expectations

  • Long-term inflation views rise to 32-year high of 4.1%
  • University of Michigan sentiment index at 57 after 64.7
Consumers expect prices to rise at an annual rate of 4.1% over the next five to 10 years.

US consumer sentiment tumbled this month to a more than two-year low and long-term inflation expectations jumped to a 32-year high as anxiety over tariffs continued to build. The final March sentiment index declined to 57 from 64.7 a month earlier, according to the University of Michigan. The latest reading was below both the 57.9 preliminary number and the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Consumers expect prices to rise at an annual rate of 4.1% over the next five to 10 years, the data released Friday showed. That’s the highest since February 1993 and above the 3.9% preliminary reading. They saw costs rising 5% over the next 12 months, the highest since 2022.

US Consumer Sentiment Plunges Over Inflation Concerns Long-term inflation expectations jump to a 32-year high

Source: University of Michigan

While the University of Michigan’s long-term inflation expectations have soared this year, other measures have remained steady. The outlook for inflation three years and five years out, according to a Federal Bank of New York consumer survey, was stable last month. During a press conference this month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell largely dismissed the Michigan survey as an outlier for longer-run expectations, and other policymakers have since echoed his remarks. As President Donald Trump’s tariff policy expands, consumers across the political spectrum are growing more worried that the added duties will drive up prices. A prolonged rise in costs could prompt households to cut back on discretionary spending, which has implications for broader economy. “Consumers continue to worry about the potential for pain amid ongoing economic policy developments,” Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement. “Notably, two-thirds of consumers expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead, the highest reading since 2009.” Labor market expectations worsened considerably across demographic and political groups in a sign of subdued spending over the coming months, the report showed. Moreover, expectations among high-income consumers sank. “This trend reveals a key vulnerability for consumers, given that strong labor markets and incomes have been the primary source of strength supporting consumer spending in recent years,” Hsu said. Separate figures released Friday showed weaker-than-expected personal spending in February amid a pickup in underlying inflation. The survey showed the expectations index plunged 11.4 points, the sharpest drop since 2021, to 52.6 this month. The current conditions gauge decreased to a six-month low of 63.8.The outlook for personal finances declined in March to a record low.

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Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick for Israel ambassador, tries to distance from past Palestinian rhetoric

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mike Huckabee, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, attempted to distance himself Tuesday from his past controversial statements about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, pledging on Capitol Hill to “carry out the president’s priorities, not mine.” “I am not here to articulate or defend my own views or policies, but to present myself as one who will respect and represent the President whose overwhelming election by the people will hopefully give me the honor of serving as ambassador to the State of Israel,” Huckabee said in his opening statement. Trump nominated Huckabee, a well-known evangelical Christian and vehement supporter of Israel, to take on the critical post in Jerusalem days after he won reelection on a campaign promise to end the now 17-month war in Gaza. But after a brief ceasefire, U.S. and Arab mediators are now struggling to get a ceasefire deal back on track after Israeli forces resumed the war last week with a surprise wave of deadly airstrikes. While Republican senators applauded Huckabee’s staunch support for America’s closest ally, Israel, Democrats questioned his past rhetoric about Palestinians deemed “extreme” by even some pro-Israel groups and contradicting longstanding U.S. policy in the region. The former Arkansas governor acknowledged his past support for Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel but said it would not be his “prerogative” to carry out that policy. “If confirmed, it will be my responsibility to carry out the president’s priorities, not mine,” Huckabee said in response to Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley’s questions. Huckabee, a one-time presidential hopeful, has also repeatedly backed referring to the West Bank by its biblical name of “Judea and Samaria,” a term that right-wing Israeli politicians and activists have thus far fruitlessly pushed the U.S. to accept. He did not give a clear answer to whether he still stands by that when pushed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. Most notably, Huckabee has long been opposed to the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian people. In an interview last year, he went even further, saying that he doesn’t even believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.” As the situation in Gaza has deteriorated with the recent collapse of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal, Israeli officials have begun to talk more seriously about reoccupation of the territory, something to which President Joe Biden’s administration had been adamantly opposed. Trump has made his proposals about a potential U.S. takeover of Gaza, which have attracted attention as well as strong criticism from Arab nations and others. When asked about Trump’s plan, Huckabee denied that the president ever said he would “force displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza “unless it is for their safety” and says Palestinians could be incentivized to leave. Even before his hearing started, Democrats and some pro-Israel groups voiced their opposition to his nomination, saying that his views on the conflict are “extreme” and “counter to Americans’ interests.” “Huckabee’s positions are not the words of a thoughtful diplomat — they are the words of a provocateur whose views are far outside international consensus and contrary to the core bipartisan principles of American diplomacy,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, a senior Jewish Democrat, said in a statement Monday. “In one of the most volatile and violent areas in the world today, there is no need for more extremism, and certainly not from the historic ambassador’s post and behind the powerful seal of the United States.” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the pro-Israel group J Street, which has previously criticized the Biden and Trump administrations’ handling of the war, echoed that sentiment, saying that Huckabee’s views “would undermine American interests and the administration’s own stated commitment to pursuit of long-term regional peace and security.” He added, “Mr. Huckabee’s embrace of annexation, extremist settlers and fanatical Christian Zionism stands in stark contrast to the Jewish, democratic values held by the overwhelming majority of our community — and in stark contrast to Israel’s founding values of justice, equality and peace.”

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Israel hits building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, first since truce

March 28 (Reuters) – Israel’s air force conducted a large strike on a building in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital on Friday, a Reuters reporter said, the first heavy bombardment there since a truce deal in November ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel’s military said it hit a drone storage facility in the area belonging to Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. The strike, which was heard across Beirut and produced a large column of black smoke, followed an evacuation order by the Israeli military for the neighborhood and three smaller targeted drone strikes on the building intended as warning shots, security sources told Reuters. The evacuation order sent residents of the area into a panic, rushing to escape on foot as traffic clogged the streets out of the area, Reuters reporters in the area said.Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh, were pounded last year by Israeli strikes that killed many of the group’s top leaders, including its powerful chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a September air attack. A U.S.-brokered truce in November put an end to the fighting and mandated that southern Lebanon be free of Hezbollah fighters and weapons, that Lebanese troops deploy to the area and that Israeli ground troops withdraw from the zone. But the truce has been shaken over the last week by two cases of outgoing fire from southern Lebanon – several rockets fired on March 22 and another set fired on Friday morning. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the Lebanese government bore direct responsibility for the attack and said that as long as there was no peace in Galilee “there will be no peace in Beirut either.” Israeli ministers have vowed to ensure that the tens of thousands of Israelis who evacuated their homes in border areas when Hezbollah began bombarding the area in 2023 would be able to return safely. But with more Israeli units deployed around Gaza, where a separate ceasefire has also broken down, it remained unclear whether Israel was prepared for any wider intervention.
Hezbollah denied links to either attack. No other group has claimed responsibility. But Israel’s statement confirming its raid on Dahiyeh said that the Friday morning rocket fire “constitutes a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon and a direct threat to the citizens of the State of Israel.” It added that the Lebanese state bears responsibility for upholding the agreement.
Israel also bombarded Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon on Friday after intercepting the incoming rocket fire, the Israeli military said. Israel has vowed a strong response to any threats to its security, prompting fears that last year’s conflict – which displaced more than 1.3 million people in Lebanon and destroyed much of the country’s south – could resume. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in Paris to meet his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, said in a written statement from France that the onus was on the international community to “put an end to these attacks and force Israel to abide by the agreement, just as Lebanon is committed to it.”
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Iran to target US bases in region if attacked

Iran will target the United States and its allies’ bases in the region if attacked, the country’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf  warned on Friday. Speaking at an event at the Tehran University, Ghalibaf said that the letter United States President Donald Trump sent to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “one of a bully… But you can neither bully nor deceive the Iranian nation.” He noted that conducting any talks in such an uneven atmosphere “would be a prelude to war, which no nation would accept.” Iran replied to Trump’s letter on Wednesday. Reportedly, Trump gave Iran two months to agree to revive the talks about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or risk consequences.

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Oil Prices Gain On Venezuela Tariffs

Oil market sentiment continues to improve, albeit very gradually and prone to reversals, after the lows hit during London’s IE Week in February. That’s what analysts at Standard Chartered Bank, including the company’s Commodities Research Head Paul Horsnell, said in a report published late Tuesday by Horsnell, adding that the improvement has enabled prices to rise about $5 per barrel from their early-month lows.“ We listed some of the reasons for the price upside in an earlier report, including  technicals, geopolitical risk, and reappraisals of shale oil economics and global balances; the reappraisals imply that the potential sustainable downside from current prices is fairly limited,” the analysts said in the report. “The supply surpluses the market had feared have yet to materialize, and the outlook for Q2 and Q3 does not suggest that any surplus is imminent,” they added. The analysts projected in the report that global demand will exceed supply by 0.9 million barrels per day in the second quarter of this year and by 0.5 million barrels per day in the third quarter.  Our forecasts project a slight inventory draw across 2024 and 2025 combined, projections that sit uneasily with the talk of glut that has dominated much analyst and media commentary over the past year,” they added. “However, while sentiment is better, so far that improvement has primarily come from traders discounting the likelihood of prices moving significantly lower,” they continued. “The bulk of opinion on potential price upside remains highly conservative; the current Bloomberg analyst consensus is flat for the rest of the year and into Q1-2026 and is only slightly above the market curve,” they pointed out. The Standard Chartered Bank analysts noted in the report that they think the early-year strength in global oil demand has played a key role in moderating extreme bearishness among some traders. “We noted in a recent report that global oil demand has made a strong start to 2025,” they said in the report. “Based on a variety of national sources as well as the 19 March Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) release, we estimate that demand averaged 102.77 million barrels per day in January, a year on year increase of 2.19 million barrels per day,” they added. “This is in line with the EIA estimate for January, which put demand at 102.74 million barrels per day and growth at 1.85 million barrels per day,” they continued. The analysts noted in the report that January is usually the seasonal low point for global demand. “We expect demand to move above 105 million barrels per day for the first time in June before reaching a 2025 high of 105.6 million barrels per day in August,” they said. “While the main downside risk to demand comes from U.S. tariff policies and the economic uncertainty they create, for now demand-side fundamentals appear robust despite negative sentiment,” the analysts added. The Standard Chartered Bank analysts went on to state in the report that, while sentiment among most traders has improved in recent weeks, speculative funds remain cautious, with a bias towards negative positioning, particularly in WTI. “Our WTI money-manager positioning index fell 9.8 week on week to -69.8 in the latest positioning data, while our Brent money-manager positioning index rose by 21.7 week on week to +16.4,” they said in the report. “Positioning across the energy complex remains mainly negative, with the demand effects of U.S. tariff policy and the supply effects of potential U.S.-Russia cooperation among speculative traders’ main concerns,” they added.In the report, Standard Chartered projected that the ICE Brent nearby future crude oil price will average $75 per barrel in the first quarter of this year, $73 per barrel in the second quarter, $77 per barrel in the third quarter, $82 per barrel in the fourth quarter, $85 per barrel in the first quarter of next year, and $83 per barrel in the second quarter of 2026.

In a research note issued  by the JPM Commodities Research team late Monday, analysts at J.P. Morgan said the estimated value of open interest across energy markets “increased by $14.5 billion week on week (2.3 percent week on week) and is now at a four-week high of $644 billion following an increase in crude and refined product prices”. “Contract-based inflows reached~$4.7 billion week on week, largely into crude ($2 billion week on week) and natural gas markets ($1.7 billion week on week),” the J.P. Morgan analysts added. “Our oil strategists flag that despite escalating tensions, Brent implied volatility is low, and oil prices trade below fair value, while gold hits a new all-time high,” they continued. “We expect Brent prices to rise to the mid- to high-$70s in the coming months, then fall below $70, ending the year in the mid-$60s, averaging $73. Our 2026 outlook is bearish, with 2025 surpluses dragging prices to the high $50s by year-end,” the analysts projected in the note.

A research note s by Natasha Kaneva, Head of Global Commodities Strategy at J.P. Morgan, on March 20 showed that J.P. Morgan expected the average Brent price to come in at $74 per barrel in the first quarter of this year, $77 per barrel in the second quarter, $73 per barrel in the third quarter, $69 per barrel in the fourth quarter, $64 per barrel in the first quarter of 2025, $63 per barrel in the second quarter, $59 per barrel in the this quarter, and $57 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2026.

A BMI report  by the Fitch Group on March 21 showed that BMI sees the front month Brent Crude price averaging $76 per barrel in 2025 and $75 per barrel in 2026. BMI is a unit of Fitch Solutions.

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ECB’s Kazaks warns US tariffs could raise prices, slow economy

Must see video: Ray Dalio’s Warning 

European Central Bank Governing Council Member and Latvian Central Bank Governor Martins Kazaks (pictured) warned Thursday that US President Donald Trump’s trade restrictions would harm Latvia’s and EU’s “export-driven economy,” leading to higher prices and weaker growth. In an interview with LTV’s Rita panorama on Thursday, Kazaks stressed that trade barriers are detrimental, particularly for Europe. “All restrictions and obstacles to trade are bad for us,” he said, noting that such policies could slow economic activity and hurt the labor market. Kazaks’ remarks follow Trump’s threat to impose “far larger” tariffs on the EU and Canada if they collaborate against US interests. The warning came after both Canadian and EU leaders criticized his new auto tariffs.

nn: another great depression is in the winds
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Trump slaps 25% tariff on non-US-made cars

United States President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday a 25% tariff on “all cars” manufactured outside the United States, with implementation set for April 2, coinciding with the previously declared metal tariffs. “This is the beginning of Liberation Day in America,” Trump restated from the Oval Office noting that he would hold a press conference on April 2. “What we are going to be doing is a 25% tariff on all cars that are not made in the US. If they are made in the US there’s absolutely no tariffs.” He then signed the executive directive. He also indicated that his administration is exploring tax deductions on car loan interest for domestically produced vehicles. Trump stated that the automotive tariffs would be “permanent” and that while reciprocal duties would apply to all nations, they would remain “lenient.”

nn: the party has begun…..  this has been done before with disasters’ results
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Oil Prices Rise as the EIA Reports a Decline in Crude and Product Inventories

  • U.S. crude oil inventories decreased by 3.3 million barrels during the week ending March 21, according to the EIA.
  • Gasoline inventories also decreased by 1.4 million barrels, while distillate inventories fell by 400,000 barrels.
  • The decrease in crude oil inventories contributed to an increase in crude oil prices, with Brent and WTI benchmarks rising.

Crude oil inventories in the United States saw a decrease of 3.3 million barrels during the week ending March 21, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration released on Wednesday. Crude oil prices were trading up prior to the crude data release by the U.S. Energy Information Administration after the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported on Tuesday a draw of 4.6 million barrels in U.S. crude oil inventories amid a strong gasoline draw. The Brent benchmark was trading up 0.88% at 9:39 a.m. ET at $73.66—a roughly $3 per barrel increase over this same time last week. The WTI benchmark, meanwhile, was trading up 0.84% at $69.58—just shy of a $3 per barrel rise over last week’s levels. For total motor gasoline, the EIA estimated that inventories decreased 1.4 million barrels for the week to March 21, with production averaging 9.2 million barrels daily. This compares with an inventory decrease of 500,000 barrels for the previous week and an average daily production of 9.6 million barrels. For middle distillates, the EIA estimated another inventory decrease, this time of 400,000 barrels, with production decreasing to an average of 4.5 million barrels daily. This compares to an inventory dip of 2.8 million barrels in the week prior, when production stood at an average of 4.6 million barrels daily. Distillate inventories are now 7% below the five-year average for this time of year. Total products supplied over the last four weeks were down week over week, averaging 20.2 million barrels per day—a 0.5% increase over this time last year. Distillate products supplied over the last four weeks are up 1.8% compared to this time last year, while gasoline products supplied were down 0.2% from same period last year.

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EU: Russia must withdraw before sanctions are lifted

A European Union spokesperson insisted on Wednesday that one of the prerequisites for lifting sanctions against Russia is its withdrawal from Ukrainian territory and the end of its “unprovoked and unjustified aggression” against Ukraine. Moscow claimed yesterday that the United States agreed to ease some sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 in return for a partial ceasefire and the re-establishment of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The US did not release details of the agreement but the White House said the Trump administration will help restore Russia’s access to “the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”

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IDF says it struck ‘remaining military capabilities’ at pair of Syrian airbases

Syrian airbases are struck by the IDF as the IDF continues ground operation in Gaza. Hamas releases a propaganda video of hostages Elkana Bohbot and Yoseph Haim Ohana in a sign of life. And Houthi terrorists continue attacks with ballistic missile aimed at central Israel last night. The Israeli army carried out strikes on targets at the Syrian airbases Palmyra and Tiyas (T4), the press service of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reports. In particular, the military struck the “remnants of military potential” at the Palmyra and Tiyas (T-4) airbases in Syria, a few days after similar strikes were carried out on these same airfield