‘Tariff Derangement Sydrome’ Remains As UMich Sentiment Surges In Early June

Just days after CPI disappointed the the Trump Tariff infation fear-mongers once again and a month since the UMich survey found that “Women, Democrats, & Low-Income Americans Are Out Of Their TDS-Addled Minds“, and one week after Goldman finally called out the idiocy of the UMich survey, slamming its “partisanship” and the “sample design break starting from June 2024“…

… not to mention that it has been chronically wrong, warning that “Michigan inflation expectations have already risen even more than in 2022 and this time long-term expectations have risen sharply too, all before tariffs have even meaningfully boosted consumer prices” while “technicalities have exaggerated the increase in the Michigan [inflation] survey, as other survey measures and market-implied inflation compensation have not risen much at horizons beyond the next year”, moments ago the preliminary UMich survey for the month of June saw sharp revisions to the prelim prints, to wit:

• The headline Sentiment print jumped dramatically from its lowest since May 1980 – to 60.5, well above the median estimate of 53.6

• The Current Conditions print also surged from 58.9 to 63.7, well above expectations.

• The Expectations print spiked to 58.4 from 47.9 and above the median estimate of 49.7

That is the biggest MoM jump in the Headline Sentiment index since January 2024…

Source: Bloomberg

These trends were unanimous across the distributions of age, income, wealth, political party, and geographic region.

Source: Bloomberg

Moreover, all five index components rose, with a particularly steep increase for short and long-run expected business conditions, consistent with a perceived easing of pressures from tariffs. Consumers appear to have settled somewhat from the shock of the extremely high tariffs announced in April and the policy volatility seen in the weeks that followed.

Inflation Expectations finally gave way to reality with 1Y expectations falling from 6.6% to 5.1%…

Source: Bloomberg

However, ‘Tariff Derangement Syndrome’, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it, was very evident as Democrats’ inflation expectations surged even higher to a ridiculous 10.1% over the next year!

Source: Bloomberg

The longer-term inflation expectation also fell overall but both Independents and Democrats 

Source: Bloomberg

Women remain far more concerned about inflation than men…

Source: Bloomberg

As a reminder, its the Democratic-run states that are seeing the highest level of inflation, so perhaps they’re on to something…

One more for fun – comparing Democrats view of the inflationary outlook to the ‘hard’ inflationary data…

Source: Bloomberg

The percentage of UMich respondents making unsolicited negative comments about news they’ve heard on government economic policy remains just shy of record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

But, as we tweeted, this farcical data makes no sense…

Just when you thought UMich couldn’t be bigger goalseeked garbage, it is:

Overall 1Yr inflation expectations drop even as Democrat, Republican and Independent inflation expectations all rise! pic.twitter.com/xaNwCDMzKr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 13, 2025

We look forward to UMich explaining that… did they change the weighting of Democrats’ TDS-addled views? (and not tell anyone?)