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CFO Brew

Kristen Talman

cfobrew.com

Fourth quarter of 2023 could be steady

 North American and Western European markets show signs of hopefulness amid a challenging financial and job market. 

Economic indicators point to steady trends for Q4

Drew Adamek

Disruptions for 2023: Place your bets

Now taking bets on a few scenarios that aren’t out of the question.

After years of unpredictable disruptions CFO Brew tries to get ahead of the curve for 2023

The dot-com bubble burst two decades ago

Tech companies are facing headwinds not seen since the early 2000s when the dot-com bubble burst. 

Finance chiefs see parallels between the dot-com bust and the current techlash 

Hundred dollar bills with stock exchange board

Economy

Natasha Piñon

The World Trade Organization lowered its global merchandise trade growth forecast for 2026, blaming “the cooling global economy and new tariffs,” in a 

The Geneva-based trade body expects goods trade volume to slow from 2.8% last year to 2.4% in 2025, a jump from 0.9% growth for the year it forecast back in August.

However, the picture sours looking ahead to 2026, with the WTO expecting international merchandise trade volume growth of just 0.5%. That’s a sharp drop from the 1.8% the organization previously forecast.

“Countries’ measured response to tariff changes in general, the growth potential of AI, as well as increased trade among the rest of the world—particularly among emerging economies—helped ease trade setbacks in 2025,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the WTO, said in a statement. Speaking with reporters in Geneva, Okonjo-Iweala said she was “very concerned” for 2026, noting “the outlook for next year is bleaker,” 

In the first half of 2025, world merchandise trade volume, or the “average of exports and imports,” climbed 4.9% year over year. A surge of frontloaded imports in the US, as well as “favorable macroeconomic conditions such as disinflation, supportive fiscal policies, and strong growth in emerging markets,” were key drivers in this growth, the WTO noted.

However, “economists said the August trade data could show a marked slowdown in US imports, because of the steep tariffs Mr. Trump put on exports from dozens of nations on Aug. 7,” the 

Strong AI demand played a role as well, with “AI-related goods,” like semiconductors and servers, driving “nearly half of the overall trade expansion in the first half of the year, [and] rising 20% year-on-year in value terms,” the organization said.

Some of those bright spots might fade, the WTO noted, explaining that the frontloading seen earlier this year could be unwound by “higher tariff rates and elevated trade policy uncertainty.”

 known more about US imports and exports on Tuesday, but the data scheduled to be released was paused as a result of the ongoing government shutdown.

World Trade Organization expects global trade growth to slow in 2026

Could the cause be…oh, we don’t know…tariffs?

In case your latest trip to the mall wasn’t 

 companies are raising prices because of Trump’s tariffs.

Just how many, you ask? Well, 66% of US companies “have already passed through up to 50% of tariff costs” to customers, per KPMG’s latest Tariff Pulse Survey, which polled 300 US-based C-suite and business leaders of companies with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion. Nearly a quarter of that group passed along more than half of tariff costs, a steep rise from just 13% of companies steering the cost to customers in July, according to KPMG.

And don’t expect things to slow down anytime soon. In the next six months, 42% of respondents anticipated price increases of up to 5%, while 29% expected increases between 6% and 15%.

“Despite efforts to optimize supply chains, we continue to see profits decline due to increases in tariffs,” Brian Higgins, KPMG’s US sector leader for industrial manufacturing, said in a statement. “Uncertainty is not going away. Instead of taking the wait-and-see approach, US businesses need to invest now in driving meaningful productivity gains as well as to help build resilience.”

But changing the status quo is easier said than done. The survey found that while 63% of US companies are in “early-stage discussions or active evaluations” about reshoring their operations to the US, only 10% are taking action.

 isn’t helping. Only 23% of businesses reported feeling confident in tariff stability, while 44% reported feeling doubt or moderate confidence. In light of that uncertainty, almost 40% of US businesses have paused hiring efforts, while a third of companies have reduced their workforce from 1% to 5% and 15% have reduced their US workforce by 6%–10%.

Tariff-driven price hikes are (still) coming 

The increases are just getting started. 

Alex Zank

Macro factors have influenced many business leaders’ decision making this year, according to a recent survey from finance talent outsourcing firm Personiv.

A majority (62%) of the 290 finance leaders, chief executives, and business owners surveyed said that macroeconomic shifts have had “extremely significant impacts” on their planning in the first half of the year.

Respondents identified interest-rate fluctuations as the biggest factor impacting strategic planning, followed by tariffs, economic uncertainty, and inflation. (Perhaps a 

Macroeconomic shifts have hit forecasting the hardest, with 64% of respondents indicating this area of the business has been impacted by macro factors. Following that was supply chain (56%), top-line revenue, and pricing (46% each).

Companies are responding by increasing investments in certain areas. Nearly three-fifths (57%) of respondents said they’ve already increased their capital investments before the August survey, and 25% said they plan to increase their capital investments in the next six months. More than half (55%) said they increased operating expenses, and 48% said they increased technology investments.

“Most organizations are showing agility as market conditions change, despite the extreme impact many companies have felt from recent shifts,” Matt Wood, global head of finance and accounting outsourcing at Personiv, said in the survey report.

Business leaders say macro factors are influencing their strategy choices

The most impacted areas of business are forecasting and supply chains.

The federal shutdown is interrupting the usually steady flow of government economic data, which could consequently make it harder for policymakers and organizations to make informed decisions.

Ahead of the midnight Tuesday appropriations deadline, the Department of Labor noted in a report that its Bureau of Labor Statistics “will suspend all operations” during a shutdown. This means the BLS will not release new reports, including the scheduled monthly jobs numbers this Friday, nor will it collect survey data while the government is halted. A prolonged shutdown would mean further delays in economic data and “a reduction in quality of data collected,” according to the report.

“The implications of this are potentially quite large,” Abigail Hall, an economics professor at the University of Tampa, told CFO Brew.

Beyond the jobs report, the BLS is also slated to release inflation data later this month, including the Consumer Price Index on Oct. 15 and the Producer Price Index (or wholesale inflation) on Oct. 16. The Federal Reserve relies on this data to make interest rate decisions. Economic data that is missing or less accurate due to the shutdown can “have remarkably impactful implications” on its decision-making, Hall said.

Businesses also use economic data to help guide their own strategic decisions. A delay of one or two months’ worth of BLS data “would not materially impact planning and capital deployment decisions,” but a lengthier delay may be a bigger deal, according to Michael Perica, CFO of IT services firm Rimini Street.

Since the BLS data is “inherently a lagging indicator,” organizations use it to analyze long-term trends, Perica wrote in an emailed statement to CFO Brew. “If there is a longer, drawn-out shutdown where a few cycles are missed, this could take away the ability to include this data in key capital deployment decisions, which is clearly sub-optimal.”

Familiar territory, but with a new wrinkle.

 The BLS has delayed data releases before in previous shutdowns, Hall noted. What makes this one different from others in recent history, she said, is that the shutdown comes amid a period of greater economic uncertainty.

“It'll be easier for us to maybe see this with hindsight, but it's difficult for us to maybe understand the full implications of this just given the contemporary policy uncertainty, and how much people are relying on those numbers to make really important decisions,” she said.

The shutdown also comes at a peculiar time for the Fed, whose leaders “are already at odds” over whether and by how much to cut rates, the New York Times 

 The BLS was already going through some tumultuous times even before the shutdown. President Trump 

 the former BLS chief in August after a weak July jobs report that he claimed, without evidence, was inaccurate.

 the Heritage Foundation’s E.J. Antoni as the new head of BLS, but the White House withdrew the nomination this week, CNN 

Delay of federal economic data, thanks to shutdown, could impact business strategy

The shutdown comes amid a period of heightened economic and policy uncertainty.

In more bad news for the job market, the US lost 32,000 private sector jobs in September according to payroll processor ADP. The losses come as a surprise as Wall Street forecasters expected an increase of 45,000 jobs 

September wasn’t the only month that took a hit in the latest numbers. ADP also revised the August job number downward, moving from 54,000 jobs gained to 3,000 lost in the month. The total number of jobs lost in recent months could be much higher because the ADP analysis does not include government employees.

ADP attributed the dip, in part, to hiring hesitancy by employers.

“Despite the strong economic growth we saw in the second quarter, this month’s release further validates what we’ve been seeing in the labor market, that US employers have been cautious with hiring,” said Nela Richardson, a chief economist at ADP, in a press release.

This may be the only job numbers to come out this week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics would normally release its employment statistics on Friday, but the government shutdown will delay, or cancel, the release.

Small businesses took the biggest hit. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees lost 40,000 jobs while medium-sized businesses of 50-499 employees lost 20,000 jobs. Large businesses of 500+ saw a gain of 33,000.

There is a sliver of silver in the news. Workers who kept their jobs saw a 4.5% increase in wages year over year.

The ADP research is based on weekly payroll data of 26 million private sector employees in the US.

The US job market continues to show signs of weakening

ADP says the US lost 32,000 private sector jobs in September. 

Corporate bankruptcies are going bigly in 2025. In the 12 months between the second half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, 117 companies with assets over $100 million filed for bankruptcy, a 44% increase over the 20-year average, according to a new report by consulting firm Cornerstone Research.

The jump in “mega bankruptcies”—those filed by companies with over $1 billion in reported assets—was even more stark, growing 33% over the last year alone, marking the highest number of mega bankruptcies in a six-month period since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

Continued inflation, high interest rates, falling consumer demand, tariffs, and uncertain policy shifts are driving the increase in bankruptcies, especially for companies already struggling, according Matt Osborn, a principal at Cornerstone Research and co-author of the report.

“A number of companies already have weak balance sheets from the prior three years or so under high inflation and interest rates,” Osborn 

. “Additional uncertainty regarding the regulatory landscape is more recently layered on top of that so companies that are already weakened by general macroeconomic headwinds are also now citing policy uncertainty.”

Manufacturing was hit particularly hard by policy changes in Washington recently, with “the highest share of bankruptcy filings across all industries,” with 30% of all filings according to the report. Among the manufacturers filing mega bankruptcies, 67% “cited regulatory, legal, and policy landscape as a key financial distress driver.”

Big corporate bankruptcies grew 33% over the last year

 High inflation and interest rates, falling consumer demand, and policy shifts are driving the increase.

Manufacturing activity was a mixed bag but generally down in various parts of the US this month, according to the latest round of Federal Reserve district surveys.

Mid-Atlantic manufacturing activity continued to soften this month, according to the Richmond Fed, as the Fed branch’s composite index for manufacturing slipped further into negative territory from August. September’s decline to -17 was harsher than the predicted -10, according to the Wall Street Journal. Manufacturers paid more in input prices this month, but prices they charged customers stayed relatively flat, the survey found.

Activity in the state of New York also declined, according to a New York Fed survey. The index dropped 21 points to -8.7, after showing gains in the final two months of summer. Manufacturers reported that new orders and shipments “fell sharply,” while inventories fell slightly and input prices remained elevated, though at a slower rate from August.

“Optimism about the outlook remained muted and employment levels are expected to be flat over the next six months,” Richard Deitz, economic research advisor at the New York Fed, said in the survey report.

The Chicago Fed, which oversees a chunk of the upper Midwest, reported a 20-point swing in its manufacturing activity index, down to -10 this month from +10 in August. The district’s survey of both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing activity showed slumps in activity, “suggesting that economic growth was below trend.” Manufacturers in the Philadelphia Fed’s territory—which covers eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware—fared much better this month. The district’s manufacturing survey revealed a 24-point increase in September to 23.2, its highest reading since January. About half of surveyed firms reported price increases, and just 2% reported decreases.

The Kansas City Fed found that manufacturing activity increased slightly in its section of the Great Plains, western Missouri, and the Rocky Mountains.

“Regional factory activity increased in September while price growth eased slightly,” Cortney Cowley, assistant vice president of the Kansas City Fed and its Oklahoma City branch executive, said in a release. “Production and employment ticked up this month, while new orders cooled.”

Survey respondents told the KC Fed that economic uncertainty is making it more difficult to plan.

“Uncertainty in end-use markets [is] making future forecasting more speculative than usual,” said one survey respondent.