Dive Brief:

• Roughly half of CFOs plan this year to sharpen their focus on safeguarding company supply chains, BDO found in a survey, as the Trump administration threatens to impose additional tariffs on imports of a broad range of goods.
• “Even without the threat of new tariffs, supply chain planning continues to be a major focus for companies in 2025,” Eskander Yavar, national advisory managing principal at BDO, told CFO Dive while citing the survey of 500 CFOs in the U.S. and abroad.
• Forty-nine percent of CFOs intend to bring a financial perspective into supply chain strategies this year, BDO found. They seek to adapt their companies to “the supply chain impacts of continued geopolitical tensions, extreme weather events, labor shortages” and other challenges, Yavar said in an email reply to questions.

Dive Insight:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will probably set 25% tariffs on imports of cars, drugs and semiconductors as early as April 5. He did not identify the countries that would be targeted by the duties.

“It’ll be 25% and higher and it’ll go very substantially higher over the course of a year, but we want to give them time to come in because, as you know, when they come into the United States and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff,” Trump said during a news conference.

Trump on Feb. 13 signed an executive order imposing reciprocal tariffs on all current and potential trade partners. He has also set a 10% tariff on China imports and plans 25% import duties on goods from Canada and Mexico as early as March 5.

“CFOs are likely more concerned about cost pressures due to new tariffs than they were in November,” when BDO conducted its survey, Yavar said. Nevertheless, “CFOs remain optimistic about growth overall.”

Seventy-two percent of CFOs expect revenue to improve this year compared with 2024, and 52% forecast higher profitability, Yavar said, citing the survey.

The fourth quarter earnings season has so far borne out such optimism, with Standard & Poor’s 500 companies reporting results that exceed expectations, according to FactSet.

S&P 500 companies have shown a 16.9% increase in fourth quarter 2024 earnings, with 77% of the companies reporting so far, FactSet said. The earnings growth rate combines the results released by companies and estimated results for those that have not yet reported.

“If 16.9% is the actual growth rate for the quarter, it will mark the highest year-over-year earnings growth rate reported by the index since Q4 2021,” FactSet Senior Earnings Analyst John Butters said in a report.

Eighteen percent of CFOs expect profitability this year to grow from 10% to 25%, with 34% anticipating a gain between 1% and 9%, BDO found in its survey of CFOs, 81% of whom work at companies with U.S. headquarters. Thirty-eight percent of the financial executives forecast no change in profitability.