CFOs are less worried! Yay! And you know what they say: happy CFO, happy…honestly we have no idea. But we are going to see this as a positive because, gosh darn it, we need some good news.
The latest CFO Survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta found that CFOs surveyed expressed fewer concerns over tariffs and uncertainty this quarter, buuuut there could be tariff-induced price hikes on the way.
The quarterly survey found that, while tariffs remained the top concern for CFOs, the share citing them as their No. 1 worry fell from 40% in Q2 to 30% in this most recent survey. Monetary policy and inflation followed tariffs among CFO’s top concerns.
However, CFOs are feeling more certain. In Q2 uncertainty was the second most-cited concern, with 19% of CFOs surveyed saying it was their top concern. In the most recent survey, that number fell to 11%. The decline in both tariff worries and uncertainty are connected, according to the survey.
“Firms are less uncertain about tariffs and are subsequently less worried about the most extreme outcomes manifesting,” wrote Zach Edwards and Daniel Weitz, co-authors of the survey. However, they warned that reduced uncertainty shouldn’t be mistaken for weaker tariff impacts on costs and prices.
Price hike. CFOs are expecting to raise prices in 2026 as the impact of tariffs continues to ripple through the economy. According to the survey, “on average, price growth would be about 30 percent lower in 2025 and roughly 25 percent lower in 2026 without the addition of tariffs,” and that firms will be struggling with price increases in the coming year.
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“This isn’t a one-time thing. It is still going to be happening in 2026. This is going to be a long-drawn-out affair,” John Graham, a Fuqua finance professor and the survey’s academic director, told CNN.
The survey also found that CFO concern about price and unit cost growth is still growing. CFOs surveyed projected that their costs will jump by 4.4% this year and that 1.7% is attributable to tariffs. Import-heavy companies still anticipate higher increases than those that don’t rely on foreign supplies, but their projections have dropped sharply since Q2. While the companies without inputs coming from abroad actually saw a slight increase in price growth and unit costs between Q2 and Q3.
The authors speculate that “these firms have yet to see the types of extreme impacts from tariffs that they expected and have thus softened their forecasts for price and cost growth” slightly.
But it's possible that those impacts have just been pushed to 2026. So, yay?