Online Sales Muted as Consumers Rush to Buy Cars and TVs Ahead of Tariffs

As earnings season kicked off last week, JPMorgan’s CFO Jeremy Barnum said on the conference call with analysts that consumers had been front-loading their spending ahead of anticipated price increases from tariffs.

That scramble to buy goods showed up in the latest data on retails sales for March, capturing a surge that notched the highest month-on-month gain seen in two years.

The headline number from the Census Bureau on Wednesday (April 16) indicated that overall spending was up 1.4% last month, measured over February’s levels.

Not surprisingly, the big-ticket items — vehicles and electronics — logged the most outsized gains.

New Wheels in the Driveway?

Motor vehicle and parts dealers performed strongly in March, growing 5.3% over the month after contractions in January (-3.4%) and February (-1.6%). Compared to March 2024, the sector experienced an 8.8% increase.

Building materials and garden equipment sales also surged, reaching $41.4 billion in March — a 3.3% month-over-month increase, the largest since March 2021 — partially offsetting declines observed since last October.

As for some of the more discretionary big-ticket items, electronics and appliances showed positive growth, with a 0.8% increase in March following a 0.5% rise in February, achieving $7.2 billion in sales — a 1.8% year-over-year increase.

But there were some indications that consumers and households bought new wheels and TVs at the expense of other categories.

Furniture and home furnishing stores reported $11.7 billion in sales, reflecting a 0.7% month-over-month decline, though sales were still up 7.7% compared to March 2024. Department stores — which are key channels for home furnishings — performed poorly for the second consecutive month, with sales declining 0.3% in March and 1.6% in February, resulting in a 2.5% decrease compared to March 2024.

The takeaway here is that the surge in home remodeling and revamping the curtains in the living room among consumers may be ebbing.

An Appetite to Keep Spending on Dining Out

U.S. retail and food services sales, adjusted for seasonal variations, totaled $734.9 billion, marking a 1.4% increase from February and a 4.6% rise compared to March 2024. Sales for the January-March period were up 4.1% compared to the same period in 2024.

Meanwhile, food services and drinking places rebounded after weaker performances in previous months, growing 1.8% in March to reach $98.3 billion in sales, a 4.8% year-over-year increase. Grocery store sales remained relatively stable throughout 2025, with marginal monthly increases of 0.1% in January and March and 0.2% in February (a revised figure).

The pull-forward in spending into the end of March seems to have come through brick-and-mortar channels. The non-store category of sales — which includes eCommerce — was up only 0.1%, where those figures had been up more than 2% in February.

The big-ticket spending among consumers has been no doubt financed at least in part by debt: JPMorgan’s results, to use one proxy, indicated that credit card spending was up 4%. Average auto loans at the bank were up in the March quarter to $86.1 billion from the year-end average of $85.3 billion, as can be seen in the latest earnings materials.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) players such as Affirm have yet to report results, but the March frenzy in spending, evidenced by the Census data, likely gave a boost to merchandise volumes. PYMNTS Intelligence has noted that the U.S. market for BNPL credit totals $175 billion, and that tally has jumped 88-fold in just six years.

What lies ahead is anyone’s guess, as consumer confidence, discussed here, has been dismal, particularly on the subjects of inflation and on assessment of household finances — and that was before the tariffs really took effect earlier this month. March’s retail sales gains may prove fleeting as a result.