Oddly enough, US consumers are trepidatious again.

Confidence among American households deteriorated in December, according to the Conference Board’s measure, which missed estimates badly in this week’s only notable US macro release.

The headline gauge printed just 104.7, a mile below the 113.2 consensus and the largest month-to-month decline since August of 2021.

As the figure shows, the drop all but erased the two-month bump which pushed the headline to the high-end of the range that’s held for most of the last several years.

The problem was the expectations gauge, which plunged — “tumbled,” as the color accompanying the release put it — nearly 13ppt to 81.1, a five-month low. Do note: That means the forward-looking measure is now flirting with the 80 threshold which, when breached to the downside, is a recession harbinger.

A caveat’s in order. The expectations index spent the better part of three years loitering around 80 even as the US economy outperformed. A measure of recession perceptions rose only slightly this month and remains very near the lows.

The good news, Conference Board chief economist Dana Peterson said, is that consumers were generally optimistic about the labor market “consistent with recent jobs and unemployment data.” The not-so-good news: Households were “substantially less optimistic about future business conditions and incomes.” Although inflation expectations for the year ahead were “stable” at 5%, the write-in responses were “dominated” by inflation.

Speaking of the write-in responses, tariff mentions were more prevalent and answers to a special question indicated that nearly half of Americans “expect tariffs to raise the cost of living.” Apparently, no one told those respondents that trade wars are “good and easy to win.”