Even if your company’s never been subject to tariffs before, and even if you don’t do business with China, Canada, or Mexico, you need to prepare for potential impacts from the second Trump administration’s tariffs, experts from PwC said at the firm’s 2025 Tax Policy Media Breakfast.

They’ve crunched the numbers, and found that tariffs could potentially be “a big shock to the operating model” of companies that haven’t dealt with them before, as Chris Desmond, PwC’s US global trade services principal, put it.

Emphasis on potentially. There’s great uncertainty right now as to what countries’ goods will face tariffs, how large those tariffs will be, when they’ll be levied, and even whether they’ll materialize at all. As Krishnan Chandrasekhar, PwC US tax leader, pointed out, one of the uses of tariffs is as a bargaining chip in negotiations between countries. This can heighten uncertainty, as we saw on January 26 when the US and Colombia threatened to place tariffs on each other and then backed down, following negotiations, over the course of a single day.

In such a volatile climate, the best course of action for business leaders is to model various scenarios, PwC experts said. Finance leaders should know what the impacts of different tariffs will be on their “supply chain operating model down to the country, country of origin, and product,” Desmond said.

For more on prepping for tariffs, click here.—CV

The flurry of executive orders and personnel changes from the new Trump administration in the past two weeks probably contributed to the word “uncertainty” popping up in earnings calls quite a bit in January, according to a CFO Brew review.

Here’s what some CFOs are saying about uncertainty around interest rates, tariffs, and regulation in recent days.

Got your interest? We assume the Fed’s pace of rate cuts and increases are always top of mind for CFOs, but it makes sense that financial services firms are even more focused on it.

The ambiguity around interest rates is starting to show up for some bank customers. On Jan. 22, Ally Financial CFO Russ Hutchinson told analysts, “we acknowledge the macro environment remains uncertain,” and noted that delinquencies of 30 days or longer increased 15 basis points compared to the previous quarter, and “late-stage delinquencies remain a key watch item.” The bank’s projected range for net interest margin, he said, “reflects the uncertain impact of interest rates and deposit competition.”

American Express CFO Christophe Le Caillec signaled that uncertainty is impacting the company’s forecasting. He told analysts on Jan. 24 that their guidance “assumes a stable economy and reflects what we know today about the regulatory and competitive environment. At the same time, there is uncertainty in the environment whether in tax policy, interest rates, or currency movements.”

Click here for more on what companies are saying about uncertainty.—GD

Put this one in the category of confirming what we’d suspected all along. Dealmaking was back in 2024.

In its annual Global M&A Report, PitchBook found that deals in North America were up 9.8% YoY by count and 16.4% by value, after tallying more than 17,500 deals collectively valued at more than $2 trillion last year.

Dealmaking was also up in the US. Large M&A deals ($100+ million) increased 7% YoY to $1.67 trillion in total value, and deal volume increased 17% YoY to just over 1,500, according to data that EY provided to CFO Brew.

The M&A market in Europe saw YoY increases of 29.2% in deal value and 17.5% in volume, according to PitchBook.

“Global M&A activity achieved robust growth in 2024, fueled by more supportive macroeconomic conditions and stabilizing valuations,” Garrett Hinds, senior analyst of private equity at PitchBook, wrote in the report.

Click here to continue reading.—AZ