One word, three syllables, something you are probably sick and tired of hearing about.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdahl. It is Tuesday, today the 25th of February. Good as always,

to have you along, everybody. Had you been thinking somehow that as we sit here five years after the onset of the pandemic,

with supply chains mostly back to normal,

consumer demand in line with what it was in the before times, and the Federal Reserve having

cranked up interest rates. If you had been thinking that maybe you could be done with

hearing stories about inflation, well, then this program today maybe isn't for you because,

man, let me explain. We got the February Consumer Confidence Index from the conference

board today, and it wasn't great. The Consumer Expectations Index, what we all think about,

income and business conditions and the job market, dropped significantly. Also, and to the point

of what I was saying, consumers also believe inflation is going to get worse in the next 12 months.

And those inflation expectations can be a dangerous thing as marketplace's Subri Beneschore

reports to get us going. Consumers are starting to get a little freaked out by all the talk about tariffs.

Tariffs on Mexico, tariffs on Canada, reciprocal tariffs across the board.

Alan Detmeister is an economist at UBS.

There were even tariffs floated on, you know, Panama and Denmark and Greenland and all this is a concern because it could get into the inflation

psychology. And people are hearing this and are like, oh, tariffs are coming. They're going to

push up inflation a lot. In surveys, Republicans are less or not concerned about inflation.

Democrats much more concerned, but the numbers aren't totally partisan.

Independence are also worried.

You can see it in the market as well.

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