We’ve heard this one before: Finance execs are very concerned about tariffs. But we can’t think of a more authoritative voice on the matter than the latest quarterly CFO Survey, a collaboration between Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, which means it’s time to hit the repeat button once more.
Nearly 40% of CFOs cited tariffs and trade policy as their most “pressing concern” in the survey. The last time finance executives were as panicked about a single issue was in Q2 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, the survey noted. CFOs’ other top concerns included economic uncertainty, monetary policy, and weakening demand.
The fun didn’t end there. The cohort that said they were most concerned about tariffs had a more pessimistic outlook about so many other things.
“Perhaps the most striking” finding, according to Brent Meyer, an economist at the Atlanta Fed, is that they expect prices to rise at a higher rate than sales revenue.
In other words, “their real revenue growth is expected to contract in 2025,” Meyer said in a statement.
The tariff-anxious respondents were also less optimistic about the US economy, projected lower GDP growth, predicted higher growth of input costs, expected to raise prices higher, and assumed weaker sales revenue growth for the year compared to the rest of the survey group.
About 40% of CFOs said they’ll pass tariff costs on to customers. Within that group, “the median firm indicated that they plan to pass through 100 percent of tariff-related cost increases.”
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