This is the first in our series about how CFOs are dealing with uncertainty across the business, political, and economic landscape. Check back frequently for more stories in this series.

You’ve done everything right. You stopped your screentime an hour before bedtime. You got blackout curtains. The white noise machine is humming along splendidly.

Then suddenly: You bolt upright in bed, thinking about your company’s supply chain resilience and its susceptibility to uncertainty. (Just CFO things!)

We don’t have to tell you what’s driving supply chain uncertainty right now. All the usual suspects still apply—from natural disasters to geopolitical conflict to cybersecurity concerns—but now there’s also the T word.

“The big thing that’s challenging us today with these tariffs is that the situation is just so dynamic,” Ted Stank, co-executive director of the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business, told CFO Brew. And as long as the temporary moratorium on China tariffs holds, “what that means for a supply chain manager having to make decisions about what we’re going to buy over the next three months is total uncertainty,” he continued.

But savvy companies launched tariff mitigation plans yesterday. (Or, more precisely, a few years before yesterday.) For the state of your sleep schedule, we hope your company is one of the lucky ones, but it’s not too late to improve communication between your supply chain and finance teams (and that’s where the “luck” really lies) to help mitigate supply chain uncertainty.

Click here for more on mitigating supply chain uncertainty.—NP

The Baker Tilly x Moss Adams fusion was finalized this week, marking the latest chapter of the public accounting arms race.

The result is the sixth-largest public accounting firm in the US, just under half of which is owned by private equity. The rest is owned by 1,000-plus principals.

CEO Jeff Ferro and CEO-elect Eric Miles, who’ll take over in January after Ferro retires, sat down (virtually) with CFO Brew the day after they finalized the deal to discuss next steps.

The two sides first met about a year ago for casual talks, but in “the last nine months or so, we’ve been talking about all the great things that could come out of this,” Ferro told us. With the deal officially in the books, the combined firm can now begin executing on all those ideas, he added.

And while Baker Tilly actually acquired Moss Adams, company leadership insisted the transaction more closely resembles a merger. This won’t be an acquisition where one side’s systems and processes dominate the other, according to Miles.

“We’re two large, successful public accounting firms that are coming together and…we’re choosing the best path forward for the combined entity,” he said.

For more on how the new firm’s strategy, click here.—AZ

A (non)comprehensive list of people who feel great right now? Kids out of school for summer; their exhausted teachers who (hopefully) can get a breather.

And a (non)comprehensive list of people who don’t feel so good? Financial decision-makers, according to the latest Economic Outlook survey from the AICPA and CIMA.

The survey, which polled 328 CPA decision-makers (largely CEOs, CFOs, and controllers), found that optimism about the US economy within that group dipped from 67% in Q4 2024 to 47% in the first quarter of this year. Now, for Q2, it’s down to 27%.

Optimism about their own businesses also fell significantly, with just 37% of executives expressing optimism about their current prospects. That’s down from 50% last quarter.

But don’t worry: Financial decision-makers aren’t just worried about the US economy and their own companies. They’re also worried about the global economy. The fun never stops!

Keep reading here.—NP

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