Post your best frustrated Trump memes. Roll out the “golden age” jokes. Recycle the “vibecession” headlines.

Confidence among US consumers was predictably abysmal in December, Tuesday’s update from the Conference Board showed.

The headline, 89.1, missed estimates. Consensus wanted 92. The prior month was revised higher due to late responses gathered following the end of the government shutdown.

There’s the chart. It’s sad. Like the American households whose opinions it represents.

Note that December’s month-to-month decline was the largest since the “Liberation Day” shock. The headline posted declines in 10 of 2025’s 12 months and sits six points below the nadir witnessed in July of 2022, when inflation peaked near 9%.

The expectations gauge — which is perennially beset — printed 70.7. That measure of consumers’ outlook spent the last 11 months below the 80 threshold which typically signals a recession.

The present situation gauge “plummeted” (the Conference Board’s word) nearly 10 points to the lowest in years.

You don’t need a lot of analysis here. The mood’s terrible. And Trump knows it. Last week, he delivered an irritable harangue insisting that everything’s going according to plan economically, thereby risking the same mistake as Joe Biden: Arguing with households about their own lived experience.

Oh, and the labor differential deteriorated yet again, which is to say consumer perceptions of job-finding prospects continue to worsen. At 5.9, it’s the lowest since February of 2021.

Womp, womp.