# Consumer Confidence and the U.S. Midterms Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/consumer-confidence-and-the-u-s-midterms Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/consumer-confidence-and-the-u-s-midterms.md Podcast: [Thoughts on the Market](https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853) Published: 2026-06-25T21:30:00+00:00 Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/b1873131-45ae-493c-a958-2110958fc192.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0 Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/b1873131-45ae-493c-a958-2110958fc192.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/episodes/consumer-confidence-and-the-u-s-midterms Duration seconds: 588 ## Resource Our U.S. Public Policy Strategist Ariana Salvatore joins our Deputy Global Head of Research Michael Zezas to consider the consumer outlook and how it may impact the November midterm elections.   Read more insights from Morgan Stanley. ----- Transcript ----- Ariana Salvatore: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ariana Salvatore, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Public Policy Strategist.  Michael Zezas: And I'm Mike Zezas, Deputy Global Head of Research.  Ariana Salvatore: Today, we'll be discussing the consumer outlook, policy catalysts, and what it could mean for the 2026 midterm elections.   It's Thursday, June 25th at 9am in New York.   Mike, you're on the road, obviously not in New York City this week. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the conference that you're at, and then we can get into some of the topics that have come up in your conversations.   Michael Zezas: Yeah. I'm down in South Carolina at Morgan Stanley's Captains of the Consumer Industry Conference, where we put together investors and leadership of key consumer companies in the U.S. to learn about each other in a more informal way, brainstorm… And it's been really interesting.  We've had a lot of meetings with leadership from different prominent consumer companies throughout the U.S. And it's been really fascinating to hear how the consumer's been quite resilient. But in general, one pattern that sticks out is rising concern about lower-income consumers' behavior starting to lag in meaningful way higher-income consumers' behavior.   You're starting to see substitution and sort of more selectivity amongst lower-income households, a pattern that began a bit last year as a lot of these companies would report with higher tariffs. That seems to have… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/episodes/consumer-confidence-and-the-u-s-midterms/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/consumer-confidence-and-the-u-s-midterms.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.