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Biden’s legacy includes record 2024 holiday sales [1]

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Date: 2024-12-26  

The holiday shopping season is traditionally from Black Friday through Christmas Eve. It can range from 26 to 32 days. This year it was the minimum 26 days. Regardless, the 2024 seasonal sales set records — even bricks and mortar stores saw an uptick. Why? Credit a significant decline in inflation and growing consumer confidence.

No doubt MAGA media and politicos will declare Trump’s election was the impetuous. Nice try. That is not how inflation works. Retailers did not wake up on November 6 and go ‘Trump won we had better lower the price of goods.’

Reuters reported 2024’s sales volume thus:

According to a Mastercard SpendingPulse report, online spending during the holiday shopping period from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 grew by 6.7% over last year, compared to a 2.9% increase for in-store sales. This contributed to a total spending increase of 3.8% over 2023, surpassing the previously forecast rise of 3.2% and topping the 3.1% increase during the same period last year.

Note: they use an extended shopping window. But regardless of the duration, the increase is real. It beat expectations. And it follows a strong 2023.

Also interesting is the increase in sales at bricks and mortar stores. There will always be shoppers who need to see and feel the product; and for clothing, try it on. Which is good news for independent retailers who will never match the marketing might of MAGA-adjacent Jeff Bezos’s increasingly monopolistic juggernaut.

Let’s also note the sales increase was real and not a chimera produced by inflation. The report continued:

Steve Sadove, senior adviser to Mastercard and former Saks CEO and chairman, told Reuters that spending rose even when higher prices due to inflation were factored in. He noted that the last five days of the holiday season accounted for 10% of all holiday spending, showing "a lot of strength in the end."

The shorter holiday window had caused retailers angst. However, that is another holiday tradition. Few prognosticators, with skin in the game, will ever predict blockbuster sales. If you overestimate, you get beaten up by experts and stockholders. If you underestimate, you are just as wrong. But success is a hell of a deodorant. The article went on:

With just 27 days [actually 26, I counted] between Thanksgiving and Christmas — five fewer than last year — retail executives were less exuberant going into the holiday season. They described their consumers as "selective," "cautious" and "conservative," and making "needs-based" purchases. As a result, many retailers doubled down on cutting prices and offering promotions, Bernstein analysts said earlier this month.

Democratic politicians over the last three years have blamed inflation on Big Retail gouging its customers. That is not the whole story. But the fact that America’s retail powerhouses can reduce prices when needed, adds credence as far it goes.

New York Times business and policy reporter Lauren Hirsch told MSNBC's Jessica Layton on Thursday:

"Despite a shorter holiday shopping season this year, Americans spent a record amount of money. According to a survey from the National Retail Association, between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, shoppers were expected to spend up to $989 billion on gifts and seasonal things like candy, decorations, and food ... we just came off a campaign season where people were complaining about the price of eggs. What drove this record number of shoppers?"

What indeed? If you listened to the media, Americans were lying in their beds with the covers over their heads fretting inflation would leave them homeless and starving.

It seems conservatives have a point. The media is reporting fake news. It points to a paradox cynical politicians are quick to exploit. Americans will tell reporters what they want to hear — “inflation is out of control” — even when their private belief suggests the issue has been overstated.

Don’t get me wrong. Prices have gone up — especially early in Biden’s term as America had to dig out from Trump’s lacksidaisical response to COVID, and its concomitant supply chain issues. However, prices always go up — the last time America saw an annual decrease in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was in 1954 (who remembers that?)

When push came to shove (what does that old chestnut even mean?), the American consumer was on the buying warpath.

Hirsch summed up this dichotomy between belief and reality:

"It's seemingly consumer confidence. The holiday season is about spending. It's about people wanting to put money out there, and they have been very frustrated. In the supermarket, we saw that, as you said, kind of decide the election, it seems. But overall, inflation has come down. And we're seeing the reaction to that in the spending. It's up not only over forecast but over last year's holiday spending as well."

The legendary ‘low-information voter’ is the reason why, despite a century’s worth of economic data proving otherwise, Americans on average believe Republicans are better than Democrats on the economy. (That’s a subject for another diary.) What makes this ignorance particularly egregious is the fact that consumers discount their own experience. It is the media telling them — as Chico imitating Groucho said — “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes.”

At the best of times, a Republican President would have a tough time following this act. But under no metric would Trump be considered the best at anything worthwhile. If he achieves even a small part of his punitive expulsion/tariff insanity, the American consumer — and the economy as a whole — is going to take a beating

I expect in 2028, Americans will once again have to turn to a Democrat to fix a Republican mess. A mess half of the voters chose. How many times can the country shoot itself in the foot?

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