As President Donald Trump reorders the global economic system, investors have been looking to earnings guidance and commentary to understand the actual impact of his administration's tariffs. But companies themselves are trying to come to grips with the rapidly evolving landscape.
So far the common theme from conference calls has been uncertainty.
Some CEOs try to quantify the Trump tariff impact while many pull guidance, or simply set targets for just the current quarter.
Apple is accelerating efforts to shift iPhone production from China to India, CEO Tim Cook says. But most companies aren't making big, long-term decisions that may be obsolete in a week, let alone a year. As Caterpillar notes, many long-term solutions require long-term clarity on tariffs.
Even when Trump tariffs solidify, companies still must grapple with how customers, suppliers and peers respond, as well as with the overall U.S. and global economic impact.
Navigating Trump Tariffs Uncertainty
The tariff offensive created so much disruption that uncertainty emerged as the dominant theme of Amazon's first-quarter earnings call.
Analysts and Amazon's executives used the terms "uncertain" and "uncertainty" an unusual 11 times during Thursday's conference call, according to a FactSet transcript.
A major question was the Trump tariff impact on e-commerce, where Amazon is dominant even as it faces off with old rivals like Walmart and new ones from China like PDD Holdings' Temu and Alibaba.
The future looks so fuzzy that Amazon's second-quarter operating income guidance featured a wider range than usual and was sharply below Wall Street's prior forecasts.
"I think with the uncertainty we've added a bit to the range that we've given you," Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts. "We generally have a wide range. But just the general uncertainty that we're seeing and uncertainty of consumer demand and everything else is causing us to increase the ranges a bit. So we'll see."
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Tech Manufacturing Shift
The tariff turmoil also threatens to upend a critical tech industry segment: manufacturing.
In fact, as trade tensions intensified between Washington and Beijing during the first Trump term, many tech companies actually started diversifying their manufacturing operations away from China to other countries, including Vietnam and India.
Supply-chain disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic in early 2020 accelerated the diversification move.
But the Trump tariffs put Apple in a bind, which CEO Tim Cook explained to analysts.
"For the June quarter, we do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. will have India as their country of origin and Vietnam to be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPods products sold in the U.S.," Cook said on a May 1 conference call with analysts.
But China "would continue to be the country of origin for the vast majority of total product sales outside the U.S.," he also said.
Big Oil: 'Focus On What We Can Control'
Oil prices are lower for a variety of reasons, including OPEC+ ramping up supply. Trump tariffs, by raising economic growth fears, are hitting oil and gasoline demand worldwide.
Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Darren Woods on a Q1 call noted that significant downward pressure on prices makes it "more important than ever to focus on what we can control." The oil major has launched a "full-court effort" to manage the impact of tariffs, he said. But, so far, there have been no changes to the company's projects.
Similarly, Chevron reported no change in operations. It did, however, cut back its aggressive pace of share buybacks.
Diamondback Energy[ticker symb=FANG], a major Permian Basin shale operator, is cutting 2025 capital spending. It estimated that U.S. fracking crews were down 15% in 2025 and will keep shrinking if prices don't quickly rebound.
Automakers Are Ground Zero For Trump Tariffs
Automakers, clearly targeted for restructuring by the Trump administration, turned cautious. Fiat, Chrysler and Jeep parent Stellantis pulled its full-year earnings forecast due to "tariff-related uncertainties" and guided revenue to a 14% decline. It suspended European vehicle exports to the U.S. and scaled back other shipments in response to the 25% U.S. tariff on foreign-made vehicles.
Ford Motor on May 5 also suspended its financial guidance, saying only that it estimated a "tariff-related" impact of about $1.5 billion for 2025. The automaker has since raised prices on Mexico-made autos.
During the Q1 call, Ford COO Kumar Galhotra said automakers face trade-war risks beyond tariffs, citing China's halt of exports of key rare earth metals.
On April 29, General Motors projected that tariffs could cost up to $5 billion this year and trimmed its full-year earnings guidance by about 17%. CFO Paul Jacobson said that "our manufacturing and supply-chain teams have been focused on developing strategies to help mitigate the impact of potential tariffs."
But Jacobsen said it was important to differentiate current conditions with the Covid pandemic.
"We want to ensure that we don't cut too deep. The environment is very different today than Covid as demand remains quite strong," Jacobson said.
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Caterpillar: Long-Term Fixes Require Long-Term Clarity
A real economic bellwether, Dow Jones giant Caterpillar expects tariffs to hike costs by $250 million to $350 million a quarter. While mulling "longer-term mitigation actions," Chief Operating Officer Joseph Creed said that many would "require more time to implement, are more difficult to reverse and, therefore, require more clarity and certainty on the long-term environment around tariffs."
Bumpy Road For Biotech
The path forward is also unclear for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
Biopharma executives have been hedging their bets, saying the Trump administration's tariffs are manageable.
A number of Big Pharma stalwarts, in a display of financial muscle-flexing, maintained or even boosted their sales outlooks for the year. But then came Trump's threats of pharma-specific tariffs in the coming weeks.
Britain-based GSK has said it was "well positioned" to navigate tariffs with "mitigation options" in the supply chain and "productivity initiatives."
Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson hiked their sales outlooks for the year. Bristol says its guide includes current tariffs on products shipped to China, but not pharma-specific tariffs.
Some companies are playing ball by announcing plans to bolster their manufacturing presence in the U.S. One of them is pharma giant Eli Lilly, whose CEO David Ricks endorsed the government's goal of increasing domestic investment.
"However, we don't believe tariffs are the right mechanism," he said on the company's first-quarter conference call. Instead, "enhanced tax incentives" or extending the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" are better tools to achieve the same goal.
Medtech Dilemma
Medical technology companies are also grappling with the unknowns.
Intuitive Surgical said tariffs could have a "material" impact on financials this year. The robotic surgery behemoth gets almost 12% of its revenue from China, according to FactSet. The company lowered its gross margin guidance for the year and now expects 65% to 66.5%. That's lower than 2024 and Wall Street's forecast for 2025.
Edwards Lifesciences reiterated its full-year sales outlook, pointing to a cushion that it says could help the company handle the impact of the tariffs.
"The bigger impact is in 2026, but it's premature to be offering any guidance or speculation about what tariffs could look like when we get out there," CFO Scott Ullem said on Edwards' first-quarter call.
Some medtech companies are holding onto hope, however. ResMed, which makes continuous positive airway pressure devices, or CPAPs, is exempt from tariffs. This is due to a provision dating back to the early 2000s that prevents tariffs on certain medical products.
Walmart, Alibaba On Tap
Looking ahead, Walmart may offer some insight into supply chains. With earnings due in mid-May as opposed to late April, the retail titan has a few more weeks to understand the situation and explore ways to respond.
Meanwhile, earnings from Chinese e-commerce and cloud-computing giant Alibaba are also due next week, along with numbers from gaming and messaging king Tencent. Those reports will offer a read on how the U.S.-China trade war is playing out on the other side of the Pacific.
