Companies from various sectors are increasing prices, cutting off financial guidance and warning about growing uncertainty, as US President Donald Trump’s trade war raises costs, interrupts supply chains and arouses concerns about the global economy.
This Thursday’s corporate balance sheets made it clear that companies around the world came across a wall of uncertainty in the first quarter, one that executives saw themselves sailing through the constant changes of the Trump government about their trade policy.
The comments of the largest packaged food corporations also stressed the concerns between companies and investors that Trump rates and their attacks on Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, will impair consumer confidence.
“Some political and economic decisions made greatly damaged the already weak consumer confidence,” Laurent Freixe, Nestlé’s president, told reporters in a call for results.
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Unilever, which also released its results, described the “decline of consumer confidence” in its US markets.
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Although most rates have been suspended for 90 days, until July 8, a universal rate of 10% and aluminum imports, steel and cars remain in force, as well as very high rates on China products, to which Beijing has responded reciprocally.
The Trump government will study the possibility of reducing tariffs on imported Chinese products while waiting for negotiations between the two countries, a source told Reuters on Wednesday.
With the first trimester balance season entering their second week, companies are accounting for chaos costs and defining how they plan to contain the consequences.
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PROCTER & GAMBLE, Pepsico and Thermo Fisher Scientific were the latest companies to cut off their annual profits, citing commercial turbulence. American Airlines removed its financial projection to 2025, as well as its peers.
Hyundai Motor said it has launched a task force to deal with its response to tariffs and transferred the production of some Tucson vehicles from Mexico to the US.
“We hope that business prospects will remain challenging due to the intensification of commercial wars and other unpredictable macroeconomic factors,” he said.
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The automaker is also considering the possibility of transferring the production of some cars to South Korea’s US to other places, he said as he reaffirmed his annual profit goals.
JD.com has said about 3,000 companies have already made consultations on its 200 billion yuan fund ($ 27.35 billion), announced on April 11 to help exporters sell their products in the domestic market next year.
