Evelyn Reynolds

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.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

The outcome was a setback for workers trying to score a second election success at an Amazon facility. The union vowed to keep trying to organize.Amazon workers voted overwhelmingly against a bid to unionize their North Carolina warehouse, the National Labor Relations Board said on Saturday, the latest setback in labor organizing efforts at the e-commerce giant.Workers at the RDU1 fulfillment center in Garner, outside of Raleigh, voted 2,447 to 829 against unionizing with Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, an upstart union founded by warehouse workers in 2022.Organizers at the warehouse, which employs more than 4,000 people, sought starting wages of $30 an hour. The current pay range is about $18 to $24, Amazon said. The union also demanded longer lunch breaks and increased vacation time. In a statement, leaders of CAUSE said the election outcome was the result of Amazon’s “relentless and illegal efforts to intimidate us.” They did not say whether they would challenge the outcome, but vowed to keep trying to organize. Eileen Hards, a spokeswoman for Amazon, wrote: “We’re glad that our team in Garner was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep a direct relationship with Amazon.” Leading up to the election, the worker-led union filed charges with the labor relations board accusing Amazon of interfering with employees’ protected union activity. The company gave preferential treatment to workers who did not support the union, according to the charges filed by CAUSE. Amazon also unfairly fired the co-founder of the union one week before workers filed for a union election in December, CAUSE said in a filing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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

The lack of clarity about tariffs and other policies could hurt hiring and investing. But the strong U.S. economy should provide a buffer.It is an axiom heard countless times in business school lecture halls and on corporate earnings calls: Uncertainty is bad for business.The U.S. economy is about to test that proposition like never before.The first weeks of the second Trump administration have been a dizzying whirlwind of economic policy moves: A spending freeze was declared, then rescinded. Federal programs, and even entire agencies, have been suspended or shut down. Tariffs have been threatened, announced, canceled, delayed or enacted — sometimes in a matter of days or even hours. Measures of economic policy uncertainty have soared to levels normally associated with recessions and global crises.Business leaders — many of whom cheered President Trump’s election victory, expecting lower taxes and reduced regulation — have been left shaking their heads.“Your guess is as good as mine what’s happening in Washington,” said Nicholas Pinchuk, chief executive of the automotive toolmaker Snap-on.“So far what we’re seeing is a lot of costs and a lot of chaos,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford Motor, told investors at a conference in New York this week.“It’s like your head is spinning with what’s coming down — you just never know,” said Chad Coulter, founder and chief executive of Biscuit Belly, a chain of breakfast restaurants based in Louisville, Ky.

.dw-chart-subhed {
line-height: 1;
margin-bottom: 6px;
font-family: nyt-franklin;
color: #121212;
font-size: 15px;
font-weight: 700;
}

Economic policy uncertainty index
Note: Daily data, shown as biweekly average.Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. LouisBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The president says the VAT system used across Europe gives other countries unfair trade advantages. Here’s how the system started.President Trump on Thursday ordered his advisers to determine new tariff rates on America’s trading partners, a move that he said would “correct longstanding imbalances in international trade.”As part of his plan, Mr. Trump has taken aim at the value-added tax, a system used widely in Europe and elsewhere to tax the consumption of goods and services. The president and his team describe the tax as giving other countries an unfair trade advantage over the United States.Here’s what to know.What is a value-added tax?It’s a consumption tax that adds tax on a good or service at each stage of production. The final VAT is the sum of the tax paid at each stage. This system is unlike a sales tax in the United States, which is imposed by states on the final sale of the good.In Europe, VAT rates vary by country, but on average are about 20 percent — far higher than state sales taxes in the United States, which averaged 6.6 percent in 2023, according to the Tax Foundation.Value-added taxes are assessed at each stage of production for a good or service. The cost is borne by the final consumer, not by the business. If the goods are exported, much of the value-added taxes are given back to the exporter. That provides an incentive for businesses to export goods instead of selling in their home market.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

A pillar of President Trump’s policies has been tariffs, which are taxes on products imported from other countries. He has imposed or threatened to impose them as a way to influence global supply chains, raise revenue and extract concessions from other countries. But what can often be lost amid proclamations targeting other countries is who […] More

Retail sales slipped 0.9% for the month from an upwardly revised 0.7% gain in December, worse than the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% decline.
Excluding autos, prices fell 0.4%, also well off the consensus forecast for a 0.3% increase, while the “control” sales group slid 0.8%.
Import prices accelerated 0.3% in January, in line with expectations for the largest one-month move since April 2024.

Consumers sharply curtailed their spending in January, indicating a potential weakening in economic growth ahead, according to a Commerce Department report Friday.
Retail sales slipped 0.9% for the month from an upwardly revised 0.7% gain in December, even worse than the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% decline. The sales totals are adjusted for seasonality but not inflation for a month, in which prices rose 0.5%.

Excluding autos, prices fell 0.4%, also well off the consensus forecast for a 0.3% increase. A “control” measure that strips out several nonessential categories and figures directly into calculations for gross domestic product fell 0.8% after an upwardly revised increase of 0.8%.
With consumer spending making up about two-thirds of all economic activity in the U.S., the sales numbers indicate a potential weakening in growth for the first quarter.
Receipts at sporting goods, music and book stores tumbled 4.6% on the month, while online outlets reported a 1.9% decline and motor vehicles and parts spending dropped 2.8%. Gas stations along with food and drinking establishments both reported 0.9% increases.
Stock market futures held in slightly negative territory following the release, while Treasury yields lost ground. Traders raised bets that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates again as soon as June.
“The drop was dramatic, but several mitigating factors show there’s no cause for alarm. Some of it can be chalked up to bad weather, and some to auto sales tanking in January after an unusual surge in December due to fat dealer incentives,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union. “Especially considering December was revised up strongly, the rolling average of consumer spending remains solid,” Frick added.

Inflation remains ahead of the Fed’s 2% goal. The consumer price index posted a 0.5% gain in January and showed a 3% annual inflation rate. However, the producer price index, a proxy for wholesale prices, showed some softening in key pipeline inputs.
In other economic news Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that import prices accelerated 0.3% in January, in line with expectations for the largest one-month move since April 2024. On a year-over-year basis, import prices increased 1.9%.
Fuel prices increased 3.2% on the month, also the biggest gain since April 2024. Food, feeds and beverage costs rose 0.2% following a 3% surge in December.
Export prices also increased, rising 1.3%. More

With less than a month in office, the president has pursued trade actions that could shatter the global trading system and dwarf the trade measures he took over his entire first term.President Trump is pursuing a far more aggressive trade policy than he embraced in his first term, allowing his unfettered instincts about how to put America at the forefront to guide him with little pretense of investigations or extended deliberations.Since taking office, Mr. Trump has threatened punishing tariffs on goods from every global trading partner. That includes proposals to tax more than $1.3 trillion of imports from Canada, Mexico and China — many times the volume of trade his tariffs affected in his entire first term.On Thursday, Mr. Trump proposed his most aggressive and consequential measure to date with a global rework of tariffs — a move that made it clear that the president would have no qualms about weaponizing tariffs and antagonizing trading partners to extract concessions.Mr. Trump ordered his advisers to devise new tariff rates for other countries globally, based on the tariffs they charge the United States, as well as other practices, including other taxes they charge on U.S. goods and subsidies they provide to support their industries.The president’s decision to embrace what he calls “reciprocal tariffs” could shatter the commitments the United States has made internationally through the World Trade Organization. That would end decades in which the United States has generally abided by the commitments it made internationally and would potentially usher in a new era of corporate uncertainty and global trade wars.Some of Mr. Trump’s threats could amount to negotiating tactics and fail to materialize. He sees tariffs as a powerful persuasive tool, which he is readily deploying to try to force other countries to make concessions on migration, drug enforcement and even their territory. But he and his base of supporters also view them as a crucial policy in their own right, a way to reverse decades of factories leaving the United States and to create jobs and shrink trade deficits.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More