Evelyn Reynolds

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., Feb. 18, 2025. 
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump said he may broaden the scope of U.S. tariffs on imports to include automobiles, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.
In remarks to reporters Tuesday, Trump said the duties would be around 25% and “go very substantially higher over a course of a year.” The president did not indicate whether the new tariffs would apply to all vehicles coming into the U.S. or be targeted toward certain countries but said they could start as early as April 2.

However, the threat represents a broadening in the administration’s aggressive trade policy that already has included 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports set to take effect in March.
The nations with the biggest auto exports to the U.S. are Mexico, Japan and Canada.
Trump said the tariffs already are having the desired effect, with companies domiciled overseas wanting to come back to the U.S.
On pharmaceuticals, the nation feeling the biggest impact likely would be Japan and India. On semiconductors, Trump did not indicate when they would happen. Those levies would impact Taiwan Semiconductor, which provides chips to companies including Nvidia and Apple. More

Ironing out the 2026 budget of the euro zone’s second-largest economy will prove a “demanding” task, French Economy Minister Eric Lombard told CNBC.
“2026, yes, it is a very demanding budget, because we will continue to diminish the deficit and to be below, of course, below 5.4%, and probably below 5%,” the economy minister told CNBC on Monday, noting that the final target hadn’t been set in stone. 
The absence of a budget and broader instability in French politics has bled into markets over recent months. Lombard conceded a “negative impact on growth,” expressing hope that investors will now return to France.

Ironing out the 2026 budget of the euro zone’s second-largest economy will prove a “demanding” task, French Economy Minister Eric Lombard told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed, after lawmakers earlier this month finally adopted 2025’s financial plan after a spate of tumultuous, government-toppling attempts.
France has charted a trajectory to reduce its public deficit, aiming to reach 5.4% of the national GDP in 2025 and to dip below 3% in 2029, Lombard said. Under European Union spending rules, member states must keep their deficits below 3% of GDP.  

“2026, yes, it is a very demanding budget, because we will continue to diminish the deficit and to be below, of course, below 5.4%, and probably below 5%,” the economy minister told CNBC on Monday, noting that the final target hadn’t been set in stone. 
“We are going to work with all the political parties … to discuss, to talk with us. We are going, also, to work with the unions, with the employers, in order to reach a consensus on the main policies that are key for the country, and policies on which we can make adjustments that will allow us to spend less in 2026,” he said.
The absence of a budget and broader instability in French politics has bled into markets over recent months. Lombard conceded a “negative impact on growth,” expressing hope that investors will now return to France.
The country’s economic performance shriveled with a 0.1% contraction in the fourth quarter, from from 0.4% growth in the preceding three months, with the Bank of France expecting a meager 0.1-0.2% rise in the national GDP in the first quarter amid anticipated increases in market services and the energy sector, according to its latest monthly business survey. The International Monetary Fund anticipates the French economy will expand by 0.8% across the full-year 2025 period.

Pension reform

Now the budget has been finalized, focus has returned to the fate of discussions over French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial — and highly contested — 2023 pension reform, which seeks to gradually lift the retirement age from 62 to 64 in a bid to keep the system solvent.

France’s new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has signaled that the legislation could return to the agenda — providing something of a litmus test for those watching France’s efforts to rein in its deficits.
“I totally trust the representatives of the workers and of the employers,” Lombard told CNBC’s Reed. “And so they know that their responsibility is to find adjustment … And they have three months to do that, I am confident they can reach an agreement on that, and if they reach an agreement, of course, it will be put in front of the parliament, hopefully to be in the law as soon as this year.”
Fitch Ratings earlier this month struck a negative tone over a potential repeal of the legislation.
“Any rolling back of the reform could undo some of the planned fiscal consolidation over the medium term and would be moderately negative for the medium-term fiscal outlook, in our view. France’s pension-related expenditures are among the highest in the EU,” FitchRatings warned in a Feb. 10 note. More

The first earnings season of 2025 has offered an early glimpse into how America’s largest companies expect President Donald Trump’s policies to impact their businesses.
Words like tariff and immigration are popping up at a higher frequency on the earnings calls of S&P 500-listed firms as Trump prioritizes policies around these themes, a CNBC data analysis shows.

CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters

During Mettler-Toledo’s earnings call earlier this month, executives found themselves fielding a barrage of questions about one key topic: tariffs.
The Ohio-based maker of industrial scales and laboratory equipment had already opened the call by breaking down the expected impact from President Donald Trump’s still-evolving trade policy. But when the event transitioned to the question-and-answer portion, the inquiries from analysts seeking further detail about potential tariffs were constant.

“Uncertainty remains across many of our core markets and the global economy,” Finance Chief Shawn Vadala said on the Feb. 7 call. “Geopolitical tensions remain elevated, and include the potential for new tariffs that we have not factored into our guidance.”
Mettler-Toledo’s experience wasn’t unique. America’s largest companies are getting inundated with queries about how or if Trump’s salvo of promises on issues ranging from international trade to immigration and diversity will alter businesses.
A CNBC analysis shows multiple core themes tied to Trump’s policies are popping up on the earnings calls of S&P 500-listed companies at an increasing clip. Take “tariff.” Just weeks into the new year, the frequency of the word and its variations on earnings calls hit its highest level since 2020 — the last full year of Trump’s first term.
On top of that, new acronyms and phrases, like the “Gulf of America” or “DOGE,” have found their way into these meetings as the business community assesses what Trump’s return to power means for them.
Curiously, Trump himself wasn’t racking up mentions on these calls. Many uses of the word “trump” in transcripts reviewed by CNBC referred to the verb, rather than the president.

FILE PHOTO: A logo sign outside of a facility occupied by Mettler Toledo in Columbia, Maryland on March 8, 2020.
Kristoffer Tripplaar | Sipa USA | AP

Still, a review of call transcripts shows how key words tied to Trump’s policies have quickly become commonplace. With the first earnings season of 2025 more than 75% complete, the comments offer an early glimpse into how these companies view the new administration.

Tariffs

One of the most talked about policies has been Trump’s tariff plans. The president briefly implemented — and then postponed — 25% taxes on imports to the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. He also separately slapped China with a 10% levy and imposed aluminum and steel tariffs. Then, on Thursday, he discussed a plan to impose retaliatory tariffs on other trading partners on a country-by-country basis.
Given the uncertainty, it’s no surprise tariffs are a hot topic. The topic has come up on more than 190 calls held by S&P 500 companies in 2025, putting it on track to see the highest share in half of a decade.

The frequency picked up late last year as Trump’s return to the White House became clear. About half of calls in 2024 that mentioned forms of the word took place in the fourth quarter, according to a CNBC analysis of data from FactSet, a market research service.
“Studying tariffs has been at the top of the list of things that we’ve been doing,” said Marathon Petroleum CEO Maryann Mannen on the energy company’s Feb. 4 earnings call.
Several companies said they were not factoring potential impacts from these levies into their guidance, citing uncertainty about what orders will actually go into place. Others just aren’t sure: At Martin Marietta Materials, CFO James Nickolas said the supplier’s profits could either benefit or take a hit from tariffs depending on what form ultimately takes effect.
While Generac didn’t calculate how these import taxes could affect future performance, CEO Aaron Jagdfeld said the generator maker is ready to mitigate the financial hit by reducing costs elsewhere and raising its prices. Camden Property Trust CEO Richard Campo said a company analysis shows proposed tariffs would push up costs for materials from Canada and Mexico like lumber and electrical boxes. These comments offer support to the idea that Trump’s tariffs may drive up consumer prices and fan inflation.

Aaron Jagdfeld, CEO, Generac
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Zebra Technologies CFO Nathan Winters said price increases could help mitigate profit pressure. Auto parts maker BorgWarner, meanwhile, anticipates another year of declining demand in certain markets, which CFO Craig Aaron attributed in part to potential headwinds from these levies.
Cisco’s R. Scott Herren agreed with other executives on the lack of clarity, describing the tariff situation as “dynamic” on the networking equipment maker’s earnings call last week. Still, the CFO said the company has planned for some variation of Trump’s tariff proposals to take effect and is expecting costs to increase as a result.
“We’ve game planned out several scenarios and steps we could take depending on what actually goes into effect,” he said.

Immigration

The topic of immigration, meanwhile, has already come up on the highest share of calls since 2017.
Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants during his second term in office. Cracking down on immigration has been a core component of Trump’s political messaging since he ran in part to “build the wall” between the U.S. and Mexico for his first term. Critics assert that his plans would shock the labor market and could result in higher inflation.
Immigration mentions tend to tick up during the first year of a new administration, CNBC data shows. But 2025 has surpassed the first years of Joe Biden’s presidency and Barack Obama’s second term, underscoring Trump’s role in elevating the issue within U.S. businesses.

Some companies grouped immigration with tariffs as drivers of broader unpredictability within the economy. Nicholas Pinchuk, CEO of toolmaker Snap-On, described anecdotes of strong demand for repair services from its clients, but said they were still stressed by red flags in the economic backdrop.
“It’s clear the techs are in a good position. But that doesn’t make them immune to the macro uncertainty around them: ongoing wars, immigration disputes, lingering inflation,” Pinchuk said. “Although the election is in the rear mirror and the new team may be more focused on business expansion, there’s a rapid fire of new initiatives. … It’s hard not to be uncertain about what’s up.”
Firms in a variety of sectors took questions about what changes in the composition of America’s population would mean. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all fielded questions about whether a slowdown in immigration would hurt demand for certain phone plans. Michael Manelis, operations chief at apartment manager Equity Residential, said in response to an immigration-related inquiry that it hasn’t seen any upticks in lease breaks from tenants being deported.
In the Southern California market, real estate developer Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam said deportations can decrease the pool of workers and, in turn, drive up employment costs in the region. That can exacerbate pricing pressures already expected as the Los Angeles community rebuilds in the wake of last month’s wildfires.

Employees of Tyson Foods
Greg Smith | Corbis SABA | Getty Images

Other businesses insisted deportations wouldn’t create labor shortages for their operations because all of their workers are legally authorized. One such company, chicken producer Tyson Foods, said it hasn’t had factories visited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or seen any declines in worker attendance.
“We’re confident that we’ll be able to continue to successfully run our business,” CEO Donnie King said on Feb. 3.

DOGE and the Gulf

Topics that gained newfound relevance with Trump’s return to office have also already started emerging.
DOGE — the acronym for the new Department of Government Efficiency led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk — has been mentioned on more than 15 calls, as of Friday morning. This department has put Wall Street on alert as investors wonder if contracts between public companies and federal agencies could be on the chopping block with Musk’s team slashing spending.
Iron Mountain’s mine that stores government retirement records was ripped as an example of inefficiency by Musk during a visit to the Oval Office. But surprisingly, CEO Bill Meaney said the push for streamlining can actually benefit other parts of its business.
“As the government continues to drive to be more efficient, we see this as a continued opportunity for the company,” he said last week.

A man exits the Iron Mountain Inc. data storage facility in Boyers, Pennsylvania, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018. The underground data center, located in a former limestone mine, stores 200 acres of physical data for many clients including the federal government.
Stephanie Strasburg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Executives at Palantir, the defensive technology company that was a top performer within the S&P 500 last year, are similarly hopeful. Technology Chief Shyam Sankar described Palantir’s work with the government as “operational” and “valuable,” and is hopeful that DOGE engineers will be “able to see that for a change.”
“I think DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is,” Sankar said during the company’s Feb. 3 call. “The commercial market is meritocratic and transparent, and you see the results that we have in that sort of environment. And that’s the basis of our optimism around this.”
He noted some concerns among other government software providers, and called those agreements “sacred cows of the deep state” during the call.
Elsewhere, the so-called Gulf of America has been a point of divergence after Trump’s executive order renaming what has long been known as the Gulf of Mexico. Chevron used the moniker Gulf of America repeatedly in its earnings release and on its call with analysts late last month. But Exxon Mobil, which held its earnings call the same day, opted instead to refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.

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Jobless filings in Washington, D.C., surged to 1,780 for the week ending Feb. 8, a 36% increase from the prior week.
Since President Donald Trump has taken office, nearly 4,000 workers in the city have filed for unemployment insurance.
The spike comes as Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency advisory board have ordered layoffs across the federal government.

Elon Musk listens to U.S. President Donald Trump speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., Feb. 11, 2025. 
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump’s moves to fire thousands of federal government workers have coincided with a surge in jobless claims in Washington, D.C., that could get worse as the efforts intensify.
Since Trump has taken office, nearly 4,000 workers in the city have filed for unemployment insurance as part of a surge that began at the start of the new year, according to Labor Department figures not adjusted for seasonal factors.

In all, just shy of 7,000 claims have been filed in the six weeks of the new year, or about 55% more than in the prior six-week period. Filings rose to 1,780 for the week ending Feb. 8, a 36% increase from the prior week and more than four times around the same period in 2024.

By contrast, the total level of claims in the U.S. has been moving little, with the four-week moving average of initial claims at 216,000, little changed from the beginning of the year and actually trending lower for the most part over the past several months.
The jump in D.C. claims comes as Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency advisory board have ordered layoffs across the government structure and instituted buyout programs for early retirement.
“I expect it to go higher, and definitely we’ll be watching it very closely,” said Raj Namboothiry, senior vice president at Manpower North America, the workforce solutions company.
While it’s unclear what share of the spike is directly related to federal government workers, the rise coincides with the White House ordering the layoffs of probationary employees along with thousands of others as the administration seeks a broad-based reduction in the labor force. In addition, some 75,000 employees have accepted the buyout offer.

Washington, D.C., had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at 5.5% as of December 2024, surpassed only by Nevada, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the metropolitan area including the Arlington and Alexandria, Va., area was at just 2.7%. The national unemployment rate for the month was 4.1%, before slipping to 4% in January.

Broader labor picture still solid

Namboothiry said the reduction of the federal workforce could present some problems in the region, though it would do little to dent a national picture that he called “fairly stable.”
“Yes, the numbers are definitely sizable,” he said. “But because you’re spread across multiple [geographies], multiple skill sets, multiple sectors, I don’t see that playing a significant role in impacting the overall market.”
There are about 2.4 million federal workers, excluding post office employees, with nearly one-fifth employed in the D.C. area and the others spread around the country. Outside of spikes around tax season, the number has held relatively constant since the late 1960s.
Still, Trump has targeted the federal employment rolls as a major part of his effort to shrink the size of government.
Displaced employees may not be out of work long, however. Namboothiry thinks their skill sets could be in high demand for certain sectors of the economy.
“This presents an opportunity, because there are clients who are looking for talent that’s exiting that may benefit,” he said. “There’s going to be some conversations around an interest from employers with this pool of talent.”
The cuts that Trump are targeting are spread around the government, with some agencies expecting dramatic cutbacks.
How those displaced employees fare will depend on their fields of work, said Allison Shrivastava, economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
“It might be that very few of them remain without work,” she said. “It definitely depends on sector. So, for example, if you are, As Trump ramps up layoffs, unemployment claims start to spike in Washington, D.C. You’re in the accounting sector right now, that’s a sector that, in terms of job postings, we’ve seen perform pretty well. Say you’re in software development … those jobs have not been as in demand. The level of difficulty that you would have in finding a job would really be contingent on the sector that you’re in.” More