US consumer sentiment continued to slide in March, based on the University of Michigan’s survey. This month’s decline was broad based across groups by age, education, income, wealth, geography and political affiliation. “Sentiment has now fallen for three consecutive months and is currently down 22% from December 2024,” the director for the survey writes. “While current economic conditions were little changed, expectations for the future deteriorated across multiple facets of the economy, including personal finances, labor markets, inflation, business conditions, and stock markets.”
Congress passed a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, and President Trump signed the legislation into law. The bill largely keeps government funding at levels set during Joe Biden’s presidency, with some changes, and runs for six months through the end of September.
China’s economy showed a modest pickup for the first two months of the year. Retail sales rose by 4.0% in the January-February period from a year ago and industrial production over the same period, according to official government numbers.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration is focused on preventing a financial crisis that could be the result of massive government spending over the past few years. “What I could guarantee is we would have had a financial crisis. I’ve studied it, I’ve taught it, and if we had kept up at these spending levels that — everything was unsustainable,” Bessent told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We are resetting, and we are putting things on a sustainable path.”
The escalating trade war between the US and Europe puts $9.5 Trillion at risk. “The damage to the trade flows in goods is bad enough,” said Malte Lohan, chief executive of The American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, which represents U.S. companies that operate in Europe. “The real risk is that it starts contaminating some of the other links.”
US tariffs will slow the global economy, OECD forecasts. In a quarterly report published today, the research outfit reduced its growth forecasts for most of the world’s largest economies for 2025 and 2026 — the main exceptions: China, Argentina and Turkey. “Global GDP growth is expected to moderate from 3.2% in 2024 to 3.1% in 2025 and 3.0% in 2026, with higher trade barriers in several G20 economies and increased policy uncertainty weighing on investment and household spending,” the OECD advises.
