Even as President Donald Trump’s war with Iran and tariffs on foreign goods are hammering working-class Americans, a new report shows that members of the US elite have never had it better.
As The Financial Times reported on Thursday, attendees at the annual Milken Institute conference in Beverly Hills this week were living in “blissful ignorance” of the economic pain hitting workers in the US and around the world.
“People are glossing over the war with Iran,” an anonymous private credit firm executive told The Financial Times. “They’ve become desensitized to it. For some reason, people are saying, ‘Yeah, so what?’”
The Financial Times also quoted one person described as a “high-powered banker” who asked, “Does anyone really care if the Strait of Hormuz is open?”
Ted Koenig, chief executive of Monroe Capital, told The Financial Times that, while people at the conference were vaguely aware of the suffering of middle-class and working-class Americans, “at the end of the day, everyone’s focused on their own investment portfolios, especially here.”
While the mood at the Milken conference may have been buoyant thanks to the record-setting stock market, fresh data released Friday showed Main Street America is feeling the exact opposite.
The University of Michigan’s latest Surveys of Consumers found that consumer sentiment has hit another all-time low, driven in large part by anxiety over price increases caused by the Iran war.
“Taken together, consumers continue to feel buffeted by cost pressures, led by soaring prices at the pump,” explained Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers. “Middle East developments are unlikely to meaningfully boost sentiment until supply disruptions have been fully resolved and energy prices fall.”
Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, noted 30% of respondents in the latest Surveys of Consumers said that Trump’s tariffs were driving up their expenses.
“It would do well for Dems to continue to shout that gas prices are high and tariffs are raising your costs!” Hoops wrote.
While consumer spending has for months held up in the wake of low confidence, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said this week that signs of real strain are starting to appear.
As CNBC reported Thursday, Kempczinski described the current economic environment as “challenging,” and warned that “it’s certainly not improving, and it may be getting a little bit worse.”
The fast food CEO pointed to high gas prices as a particular strain on working-class consumers, who are the most regular customers at McDonald’s.
“Clearly, when you have elevated gas prices, which is the core issue that I think we’re all seeing about in the press right now, gas prices, inflation on that, that is going to disproportionately impact low-income consumers,” Kempczinski said. “And so we expect the pressures there are going to continue.”
Kempczinski wasn’t the only CEO to sound alarms about US consumer spending this week.
According to a Thursday report from Market Watch, Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer said during a quarterly earnings call that the appliance industry had seen a 7.4% drop in demand in the first quarter of 2026.
“This level of industry decline is similar to what we have observed during the global financial crisis,” said Bitzer, “and even higher than during other recessionary periods.”
