By Richa Naidu, Hyunjoo Jin and Jessica Dinapoli
London / Seoul / New York (Reuters) – Companies in several industries increase prices, reducing financial advice and the warning of growing uncertainty while the trade war of US President Donald Trump increases costs, supply chains at the end and arouses concerns about the global economy.
Thursday’s winning outings showed that companies around the world have come up against a wall of uncertainty in the first quarter, while the leaders found themselves navigating in the constant position of the Trump administration on trade.
The comments of the largest companies of food, drinks and packaged consumer goods also underlined the concerns among companies and investors that Trump prices and its attacks against the president of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell will harm the main street.
“We will have to pull each lever that we have in our arsenal to mitigate the impact of prices in our cost structure and P&L,” said the financial director of Procter & Gamble, Andre Schulten, during a media call after the Pampers manufacturer announced his intention to hike prices to cover the impact of the additional costs of the tariff war.
The CEO of Nestlé, Laurent Freixe and Dove Soap Maker, Unilever also pointed out to weaken the confidence of American consumers.
The shares derived on Thursday and a rebound in the dollar collapsed while investors were trying to choose the rapidly evolving announcements of the Trump administration on the prices and the management of the Fed, the American central bank. (Mkts / glob)
While most of the prices have been interrupted for 90 days until July 8, a universal rate of 10% and rights on imports in aluminum, steel and cars remain in place, just like the samples that make eyes of the goods imported from China, to which Beijing responded in a way.
The Trump administration will examine the drop in prices on imported Chinese goods while waiting for talks between the two countries, a source told Reuters on Wednesday.
With the profit season of the first quarter entering its second loaded week, companies had the costs of chaos and explained how they plan to put on the benefits.
The giant of P&G, sodas and pepsico snacks and the manufacturer of thermo fisher scientific medical equipment, have become the last companies to reduce annual profit forecasts, citing commercial disorders. American Airlines withdrew his financial advice in 2025, reflecting his peers.
Thermo Fisher also warned of the impact of the cuts offered by the Trump administration to finance university research.
Schulten de P&G said that prices and cost reductions were its main way to go up the storm because the change in its source of raw materials from China would be difficult in the short term due to the lack of alternatives.
Nearly 30 companies around the world have withdrawn or have reduced their forecasts in the past two weeks, according to a Reuters analysis.
Earlier Thursday, Hyundai Motor said that he had launched a working group to manage his response to the prices and moved the production of certain Tucson from Mexico in the United States.
“We expect a difficult commercial perspective to continue due to the intensification of commercial wars and other unpredictable macroeconomic factors,” said the automaker.
The company also plans to move the opportunity to move the production of certain cars linked to the United States of South Korea to other places, she said by reaffirming its annual profits targets.
Hyundai and the Kia subsidiary, which are together the third world automation group per sale, generate around a third of their world sales on the American market and imports represent around two thirds of their sales of American cars.
The Chinese Electronic Commerce Giant JD.com said that nearly 3,000 companies had already made requests on its 200 billion yuan fund (27.35 billion dollars), announced on April 11, to help exporters to sell their products at the national level in next year.
Feeling of consumers
Adding to the concerns about economic weakness, the German government reduced its growth forecasts in 2025 on Thursday and now sees stagnation instead of an expansion of 0.3%, as the uncertainty of the growth in global trade disputes hinders growth and reduces investments.
And in another sign of consumer confidence in the boil of consumers, the CEO of Esssity, Magnus Groth, told Reuters that the Swedish fabric manufacturer had seen a drop in demand for hygiene products of hotels and restaurants in North America because people eat less and cannot travel.
This echoes a warning from the Mexican Grill Chipotle late Wednesday than the Americans spend less to eat due to high economic uncertainty, which prompted the food chain to reduce its sales prospects.
The manufacturer of telecommunications equipment Nokia reported a short -term disruption of American prices, while Dassault Systems, which sells software to car manufacturers, plane manufacturers and defense companies, has reduced its expected profit margin due to the volatility of the market linked to prices, bringing its actions.
Nestlé and Unilever have delivered quarterly sales better than expected, but they and their large brand rivals softened the price increases to avoid losing American buyers because of the cheapest private private brands of retailers.
This can help appease the concerns that prices fuel an increase in inflation and slow down the American economy, although other companies, including the Ray-Ban-Ban rays manufacturer, Essilorluxottica, LG electronics and interpreting interpretatives said they hike to American prices or could do it.
“While we look to the future, we expect more volatility and uncertainty, in particular linked to world trade developments, which, in our view, will increase the costs of our supply chain,” said Pepsico, Ramon Laguarta.
“At the same time, the conditions of consumption in many markets remain moderate and also have an uncertain perspective.”
(1 $ = 0.8284 Swiss francs)
(Report by Richa Naidu in London, Chandini Monnappa in Bengaluru, Hyunjoo Jin in Seoul, Vera Dvorakova and Michal Aleksandrowicz in Gdansk; writing by Josephine Mason; edition by Catherine Evans)
