Trump Tariffs Are Making It Harder for CEOs to Run Their Companies

Uncertainty the go-to word as economic data is hard to parse while parameters shift.

- Jeff Sommer

Corporate America is stumbling in the dark, and so are investors. Ford and General Motors executives say they can't estimate what lies ahead. There's too much fog to even hazard a guess, so both companies have suspended earnings guidance—signals about future sales and profits—leaving investors to navigate on their own. And the carmakers are not the only ones. A broad range of companies, including Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, the footwear company Skechers, UPS, and the engine manufacturer Cummins, say they can't talk confidently about the future.

It's earnings season again on Wall Street, and it's a strange one. Typically, publicly traded companies release their recent financial data every three months and then discuss what to expect in the weeks ahead. Not this time. The backward-looking performance data is available, as usual, but it's already ancient history. The Trump administration's on-again, off-again imposition of the steepest tariffs in a century has shifted the outlook for the global economy and for individual businesses so thoroughly that many executives, especially those hit directly by tariffs, can't project ahead in a meaningful way.

"Given material tariff-related near-term risks and the potential range of outcomes, we are suspending guidance for full year 2025," Ms. Sherry House, Ford's chief financial officer, said this past week.

She enumerated some of the things that Ford doesn't know: "These near-term risks include, among other things: industrywide supply chain disruption impacting production; future or increased tariffs in the US; changes in the implementation of tariffs, including tariff offsets; retaliatory tariffs and other restrictions by other governments and the potential related market impacts; and finally, policy uncertainties associated with tax and emissions policy." That's quite a list, but it's a realistic one.