Economists have gone back and forth on the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy. It’s still changing. Knowing the implications is difficult. There’s too much change in too little time. Here’s a compendium of what corporations have specifically said about their experiences.
The information comes from earnings call transcripts provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, so direct from the companies and not through someone else’s filter. Assume that company executives will always put things in as positive a light as possible when addressing analysts and investors.
Before getting into the list, keep in mind why they’re important. It’s easy for many people to shrug off the financial pain of a big corporation. Remember, though, that the impacts spread. It could mean employees will lose jobs, the economy weakens, share prices drop, and, ultimately, retirement accounts feel negative effects.
Steven Madden, Ltd.: The shoe company’s chairman and CEO Edward Rosenfeld said during a recent earnings call: “In terms of the gross margin pressure from tariffs, again, we articulated that was about 230 basis points. That’s not the gross. That’s the net after we got the supplier discounts for Q2.” A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point. A reduction of 230 basis points is the same as 2.30 percentage points. That’s a significant cut in profits.
General Motors: In Q2, there was a net impact of $1.1 billion due to tariffs, and that was “slightly lower” than expected, as was mentioned in the earnings call. “As we previously mentioned, mitigation efforts will take time to yield results, limiting their effect on the second quarter,” GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said during the call. “However, we’re still tracking to offset at least 30% of the $4 billion to $5 billion full year 2025 tariff impact through strategic actions such as manufacturing adjustments, targeted cost initiatives and consistent pricing.”
W.W. Grainger: The distributor of maintenance, repair, and operating products and services with a $44.8 billion market capitalization took a hit. “You can see the high-level second quarter results for the total company, including $4.6 billion in sales, up 5.1% on a daily constant currency basis,” said CFO Deidra Merriwether in the company’s August 1, 2025, earnings call. “Within the period, we saw gross margin softness from segment mix and from the aforementioned tariff-related impacts within the High-Touch business, including noise from LIFO [last in, first out] inventory accounting. This led to total company operating margins of 14.9% for the quarter, down 50 basis points compared to 2024, but roughly in line with our communicated expectations.”
PVH Corp.: The owner of such brands as Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein mentioned tariff impacts in a June 5, 2025, earnings call. “We’re also navigating the impact of tariffs. Based on our latest assessment, we estimate that the unmitigated impact of tariffs creates a headwind of approximately 65 million to our full year EBIT [earnings before interest and taxes, a measure of corporate profitability from core operations]
weighted dominantly in the second half of the year,” said CEO Stefan Larsson.
CNH Industrial: The company makes agricultural and construction equipment. “While tariffs on Chinese goods came down, steel and aluminum tariffs were doubled from 25% to 50%,” CFO James Nickolas said in the August 1, 2025, earnings call. “And while CNH procures about 95% of its direct steel needs from domestic sources, domestic steel prices have risen along with the increase in tariffs. Steel futures have increased about 30% since the beginning of the year,” showing how tariffs give room to domestic vendors to increase prices for increased profits. “And while we work with our suppliers to lock in our direct steel prices, a Tier 2 supplier may have steel content that can impact our sourcing costs,” he continued. “We are still calculating the 2025 impact on our business from tariffs imposed on U.S. imports of copper and potentially on semiconductor chips.”
Ford Motor Company: The car manufacturer expected a “net headwind of about $2 billion this year” because of tariffs, said CEO James Farley. The company is an example of how tariffs are becoming a significant factor in making decisions, and not just a view of whether to buy overseas or domestically. “The latest round of tariff policies, especially the deals in Japan and Europe and potentially South Korea, makes our strategy even more compelling at Ford. Our bet is not to compete in high-volume generic segments that typically require overseas production for cost competitiveness. Instead, we are doubling down on what we do best: trucks, iconic passion products, Ford Bro and breakthrough technology that you will soon see in our forthcoming EV platform.” CFO Sherry House said there was an $800 million impact on adjusted EBIT. Adjusted numbers are essentially normal metrics redefined by companies, often, though not always, to influence public perception.
Amazon.com: In the July 31, 2025, earnings call, the company raised the issue of uncertainty and how it can be difficult to follow what is happening or how to proceed. “It’s hard to know where the tariffs are going to settle, particularly in China,” said CEO Andrew Jassy. “It’s hard to know what will happen when we deplete some of the prebuys that we did on our own first-party retail and then some of the forward deploying that we saw of our third-party selling partners. And if costs go up over time, it’s — we’re unsure at this point who’s going to end up absorbing those higher costs. What we can tell you is what we’ve seen so far in the first half of the year, in the first half, we just haven’t seen diminished demand. And we haven’t seen any kind of broad scale ASP [average selling price] increases. And so that could change in the second half. There are a lot of things that we don’t know, but that’s what we’ve seen so far.”
It sounds as though the second half of 2025 might have a lot of surprising vis-à-vis tariffs. And this is all from large companies. The impact on smaller businesses that didn’t have buying power, lacked resources to stock up ahead of time, and are private with woes that are hidden, won’t be heard on earnings calls.