U.S. consumer sentiment plunged in April, the fourth consecutive month of declines, in a seemingly sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump’s trade wars that have fueled anxiety over possible job losses and rising inflation.

The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, released Friday, fell 11% on a monthly basis to 50.8, the lowest since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, sentiment has tumbled 34%.

The decline was “pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the survey.

The share of respondents expecting unemployment to rise in the coming months increased for the fifth straight month and is now the highest since 2009 during the Great Recession.

While consumer sentiment is not always a reliable indicator of the overall economy, it has at times reflected shifting vibes in how the public feels about presidential leadership.

The Michigan sentiment survey found that people now expect long-term inflation to reach 4.4%, up from 4.1% last month.

Those inflation expectations have now jumped for several months.

U.S. wholesale prices fell last month in another sign that inflationary pressures are easing.

The producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — fell 0.4% from February, first drop since October 2023, the Labor Department said Friday. Compared with a year earlier, producer prices rose 2.7%, down from a 3.2% year-over-year gain in February and much lower than the 3.3% economists had forecast. Gasoline prices fell 11.1% from February and egg prices, which had skyrocketed because of bird flu, plummeted 21.3%.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale inflation fell 0.1% from February, the first drop since July. Compared with a year earlier, core producer prices rose 3.3% and lower than economists had forecast.

The report comes a day after the Labor Department delivered good news on inflation at the consumer level. Its consumer price index rose just 2.4% last month from March 2024, the smallest year-over-year gain since September. Core consumer prices posted the smallest year-over-year increase in nearly four years.

— Associated Press