Consumer Trauma and the Ongoing Psychological Toll of Trumponomics on Americans

Newsweek

2 days ago

In his first inaugural address in 1933, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid out a political axiom that would come to shrewdly diagnose America's thorny brand of insularity. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Roosevelt told an audience from the Capitol steps, as the nation stood with the Great Depression newly against its back—and little did they know—a second world war shortly ahead.
In recent times, the saying has become little more than lazy exposition in Hollywood hero monologues rather than a nugget of wisdom that American politicians and voters genuinely honor.
And what doesn't often get recited along with Roosevelt's signature proclamation are the immediate words that followed, where the revered president signaled out the "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
President Donald Trump departs after delivering the commencement address at the 2025 U.S. Military Academy Graduation Ceremony at West Point, N.Y., on May 24, 2025.
President Donald Trump departs after delivering the commencement address at the 2025 U.S. Military Academy Graduation Ceremony at West Point, N.Y., on May 24, 2025.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Just several months into his second term, President Donald Trump has shown that he's going to have a volatile hold on Americans' spending decisions over the next four years, and with it a shrewd grip on their mental health. As an epidemiologist who studies and designs interventions for mental health, I frequently see how concern over things like wages, taxes, and inflation emerge as major risk factors for depression. When this strain over finances becomes recurrent, it can become something even more complex and dangerous: trauma.
Saying that the present economic uncertainty could be traumatizing to Americans may seem like hyperbole. But consider how economists have long been fusing clinical terms into their terminology, like "consumer anxiety," to acutely describe the impact of financial markets on everyday people. The deep economic uncertainty that we're experiencing due to Trumponomics though is making consumer anxiety a deeply insufficient metric. With the U.S. Court of International Trade currently blocking the sweeping tariffs Trump announced in April, and deep uncertainty about what lies ahead, we're now at a point where we have to consider how quickly our nation's consumer anxiety is turning into consumer trauma.
The Trump administration's intentions to create dense, contagious pockets of trauma throughout America were clear early on. In 2023, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought discussed wanting federal employees to be "traumatically affected" as part of a grand Trumpian vision to shrink the federal workforce. How would they go on to attempt that? By castigating federal employees' work and nudging them to resign via quixotic demands and hostile buyout offers.
Trauma occurs when we find ourselves exposed to something distressing and seemingly unpredictable (or uncontrollable), like a car accident or physical assault. When we experience a trauma, the part of our brain that's responsible for detecting personal threats, the amygdala, becomes hypersensitive. This means we become extra alert and responsive to things we perceive to be a potential threat. And we're then pushed to either fight, succumb, or retreat if that threat materializes. On the other end, when we want to avoid traumatizing others, we're generally expected to offer safety, grace, and reassurance.
Rather than that, Trump's initial response to Americans' concerns over his tariffs has come in the form of taunts—character insults and gaslighting that have included telling us on TruthSocial, "Don't be Weak! Don't be Stupid!"—and then several days later, to "BE COOL." But most American consumers believe they'll be the ones absorbing Trump's tariffs.
While Trump's negotiations have thus far consisted of a number of empty threats, last-second retreats, and fairly brief periods of implementation—which seems innocuous enough—it's precisely this kind of unevenness that characterizes traumatization. The power of trauma lies in its ability to diminish our sense of current safety and future stability. Analysts have dubbed Trump's bartering approach "TACO"—Trump Always Chickens Out. But his approach more acutely reflects the parable of the boy who cried wolf. Except in this strange universe, the boy retains his control and safety from beginning to end while everybody else is imperiled.
According to a Quinnipiac poll conducted in April, 72 percent of voters indicated that they believe tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy. Americans' fears over the consequences of tariffs, however, have yet to tame President Trump's unpredictable tendencies. His staccato approach to economic policy of promises to start, rescind, or pause tariffs—and other potentially economically distressing decisions—ensures we all stay on high alert. As people await Trump's response to the recent federal ruling, they're undoubtedly asking themselves: "Will the tariffs be re-introduced? How do I adjust?"
Already, many Americans have plans on precautionary saving and stockpiling goods, trauma-aligned behaviors, in response to increasing costs. Seventy-five percent of people in an April Harris poll said the current economy has negatively affected their decision to buy a home, and 65 percent in the same poll said it has negatively impacted their decision to have a child.
And we can't forget the interpersonal impacts. Trauma makes us less trusting and less connected with one another and the world. People who have experienced trauma express lower levels of relationship satisfaction, decreased motivation, and an overall lower quality of life. We shouldn't take this lightly. Unlike bad economic policy, which can generally be revived through good economic policy, a deep fraying of Americans' trust and connection to the country and its economic systems may not be something the nation can so easily recover from.
Jerel Ezell is a political epidemiologist and visiting scholar at the University of Chicago Medicine. He studies the cultural aspects of policy and health.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.