Businesses across multiple industries are increasing prices, cutting financial guidance and warning of growing uncertainty as US President Donald Trump’s trade war pushes up costs, up-ends supply chains and stirs concerns about the global economy.
Yesterday’s earnings made it clear that corporations around the world ran into a wall of uncertainty in the first quarter, as executives found themselves navigating the Trump administration’s constantly shifting stance on trade.
Comments from the biggest packaged food companies also underscored worries among businesses and investors that Trump’s tariffs and his attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will hurt confidence on Main Street.
“Some political decisions, economic decisions taken have rather undermined already soft consumer confidence,” Nestle CEO Laurent Freixe told reporters in an earnings call.
Dove soap maker Unilever, which was also reporting earnings, described “declining consumer sentiment” in its North American markets.
Stocks drifted yesterday and a rebound in the dollar fizzled out as investors tried to pick through the Trump administration’s fast-changing announcements on tariffs and the leadership of the Fed, the US central bank.
While most of the tariffs have been paused for 90 days until July 8, a 10 per cent universal rate and duties on aluminium, steel and car imports remain in place, as do eye-popping levies on goods imported from China, to which Beijing has responded in kind.
The Trump administration will look at lowering tariffs on imported Chinese goods pending talks between the two countries, a source told Reuters on Wednesday.
With the first-quarter earnings season entering its second busy week, companies were counting the costs of the chaos and setting out how they plan to stem the fallout.
Procter & Gamble, soda and snacks giant PepsiCo and medical equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific , became the latest companies to cut annual profit forecasts, citing the trade turmoil. American Airlines withdrew its 2025 financial guidance, mirroring its peers.
Thermo Fisher also warned of the impact of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to academic research funding.
Hyundai Motor said it had launched a task force to handle its response to the tariffs and moved production of some Tucson crossover vehicles from Mexico to the US.
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