Consumer sentiment took another hit in March as worries intensified over inflation and a slumping stock market, according to the University of Michigan’s latest sentiment survey released Friday.

The survey posted a mid-month reading of 57.9, which represents a 10.5% decline from February and was below the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 63.2. The reading was 27.1% below a year ago.

While the current conditions index fell a less severe 3.3%, the expectations measure for the future was off 15.3% on a monthly basis and 30% from the same period in 2024.

In addition, fears grew over where inflation is headed as President Donald Trump institutes tariffs against U.S. trading partners.

The one-year outlook spiked to 4.9%, up 0.6 percentage point from February and the highest reading since November 2022. At the five-year horizon, the outlook jumped to 3.9%, up 0.4 percentage point for the highest level since February 1993.

While the survey is often prone to disparities between parties, survey officials said sentiment slumped across partisan lines along with virtually all demographics.

“Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty around policy and other economic factors; frequent gyrations in economic policies make it very difficult for consumers to plan for the future, regardless of one’s policy preferences,” survey director Joanna Hsu said. “Consumers from all three political affiliations are in agreement that the outlook has weakened since February.”

Expectations fell 10% for Republicans, 24% for Democrats and 12% for independents, Hsu added.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

Americans use a lot of aluminum.

The metal is both lightweight and an effective conductor of electricity, giving it countless applications in transportation and energy systems alongside culinary work and more.

“It really is the magic metal,” said Charles Johnson, president and CEO of the Aluminum Association.

Aluminum is one of 50 “critical minerals” identified by the U.S. Geological Survey. But most production of aluminum occurs in other countries.

The Trump administration would like to bring some of that production into the U.S. Its main policy tool here will be tariffs, which are taxes on imported goods.

Since 2018, the U.S. has levied a 10% tariff on aluminum imports. During the Biden years, various trading partners were exempted from those fees. As a result, the effective rate for aluminum entering the U.S. was just 3.91% in February 2025, according to S&P Global. In March 2025, President Donald Trump raised existing tariffs on steel and aluminum to 25%.

Canada is by far the largest source of U.S. imports of aluminum.

The full price-level effects of these tariffs are unknown and any analysis is subject to revision as trade negotiations unfold. Still, some experts believe that price increases for consumers potentially could be small.

“When you consider a $40,000 car or something like that, it might increase the price by about $75,” said Scott Paul, president at the Alliance for American Manufacturing, an advocacy and lobbying group.

The administration says that these tariffs are necessary to fight trends in the global economy that disadvantage the U.S, primarily the rising importance of China.

“The subsidies allowed China to come in at an artificially low price. And that has roiled the aluminum industry globally and in particular in the United States,” said Paul.

The Aluminum Association, a U.S. organization comprised of industry decision makers, believes that rebuilding domestic smelting capacity could take large provisions of electricity and potentially have a net negative effect on the domestic labor force. In an interview with CNBC, the group also noted that it could take around eight to 10 years to build new industrial facilities like “smelters” which convert alumina into its final, consumer-friendly form.

“In the meantime we will import,” Johnson said.

Watch the video above to see why President Trump is taxing imports of aluminum.

On the surface, February’s inflation data released this week brought some encouraging news. But underneath, there were signs likely to keep the Federal Reserve on hold when it comes to interest rates.

While the consumer and producer price indexes both were lower than anticipated, that won’t necessarily be reflected in the main measure the Fed uses to gauge inflation.

Because of some byzantine math and trends in a few key areas beneath the headline readings, policymakers are unlikely to take a lot of comfort in these numbers, according to multiple Wall Street economists.

“In short, progress on inflation has started off 2025 on the wrong foot,” Bank of America economist Stephen Juneau said in a note. “Our forecast for PCE inflation reinforces our view that inflation is unlikely to fall enough for the Fed to cut this year, especially given policy changes that boost inflation. We maintain our view that policy rates will stay on hold through year-end unless activity data really weakens.”

Markets agree, at least for now. Traders are assigning virtually no probability to a cut at next week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting and only about a 1-in-4 chance of a reduction in May, according to CME Group calculations.

While the Fed pays attention to the two Bureau of Labor Statistics gauges, it considers the last word on inflation to be the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures price index.

Central bank officials believe the PCE reading — in particular the core that excludes food and energy prices — to be a broader look at price trends. The index also more closely reflects what consumers are buying rather than just the prices of individual goods and services. If consumers are, say, substituting chicken for beef, that would be more indicated in PCE rather than CPI or PPI.

Most economists think the latest PCE reading, scheduled for release later this month, will show the year-over-year inflation rate at best holding steady at 2.6% or perhaps even ticking up a notch — further away from the Fed’s 2% goal.

Specifically, Thursday’s PPI report, which measures wholesale costs and is thus considered an indicator for pipeline inflation, “confirms our fears that the benign February inflation print would map across to a hotter than expected inflation print on the Fed’s preferred PCE inflation gauge,” wrote Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI.

“Rather than decline steadily through early [second quarter], PCE inflation looks instead set to be bumpy and choppy,” he added.

Some of the areas that will feed through from PPI and elevate PCE include higher prices for hospital care as well as insurance prices and air transportation, according to Sam Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

“The outturn almost certainly will make the Fed wince,” Combs wrote.

Combs predicts the core PCE reading for February will show an inflation rate of 2.8%, a 0.2 percentage point increase from January. That’s about in line with others on the Street, as Bank of America and Citigroup see the core inflation rate at 2.7%. Either way, it’s moving in the wrong direction. The consumer price index showed a core inflation rate of 3.1%, the lowest since April 2021.

However, there could be some good news yet.

As much as the expectation is for a bounce from February, many forecasters see inflation pulling back beyond that, even with the impact from tariffs.

Citi thinks March will see a “much more favorable” reading, with the firm predicting an out-of-consensus call of the Fed resuming its rate cuts in May. Market pricing currently indicates a much greater likelihood of a June cut.