There may be temptation among business leaders to keep things close to the vest as they grapple with the highest rate of American tariffs since the 1930s, but experts say that transparency and open communication are the best course of action.
In a Thursday panel discussion hosted by business advisory firm Riveron, three experts agreed that businesses need to take early, decisive actions amid the Trump administration’s tariff rollout, and communicate clearly with stakeholders about all mitigation measures.
“When you least want to give guidance, that’s when you need to give it to investors the most,” said April Scee, managing director and strategic communications practice leader at Riveron. “Stay silent at your own risk.”
It bears noting that talk of tariffs has dropped significantly on earnings calls since the start of the year.
In 2025’s third quarter, for instance, analysts brought up the word “tariff” just over 1,300 times during earnings calls held by Fortune 100 companies, while management mentioned the term 710 times. Both are down considerably from the first quarter of the year, when analysts used the term a whopping 4,438 times and managers used it nearly 3,200 times, according to Riveron’s analysis of data from AlphaSense.
But Riveron’s panelists said that such data “doesn’t mean that investors have stopped caring about tariffs,” Scee said. Now, investors are instead looking for a “broader mitigation playbook” on any impacts going forward, she said.
“You don’t need to be able to predict the future,” she said. “You just have to show you have a credible playbook and know how to execute on it. If you said you would reduce exposure and you did, that matters.”
As an example of the type of communication investors are looking for, Scee suggested management teams show how tariffs could hit P&L, and what a “fallback plan looks like if policy shifts again.”
Scee pointed to Ford’s decision to pull full-year guidance earlier this year. The company’s decision “wasn’t elegant but was really honest,” she said. “They pulled full-year guidance when it didn’t make sense. When they brought it back, it moved around, but they maintained transparency at all times. They never hid the ball.”
Then there are the examples of Hermes and Procter & Gamble, which each announced price increases in their U.S. markets due to tariff impacts. Scee highlighted Procter & Gamble’s move in July as a “model of precision” due to the company’s decision to quantify the effects of tariffs early on. The company this summer said it would raise prices on about a quarter of its products in the U.S., and estimated the country’s tariffs would increase costs by about $1 billion before tax in its 2026 fiscal year.
“Isolating the impact of tariffs is messy,” Scee noted, “but the Street still expects you to make sense of it.”
It doesn’t hurt to check on how peer companies are responding publicly and privately to tariffs. Chad Fleeger, Riveron’s director of supply chain and operations, tariffs and trade, suggested “trying to get a pulse on” how competitors are responding to tariffs.
The future of tariffs, of course, is also an open question. The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month heard initial arguments in a case that will determine the legality of the president’s tariff regime, and a decision may not come for weeks or months. At the same time, the Trump administration is weighing big exemptions to tariffs in a bid to bring down food prices, The New York Times reported late last week.
“Regardless of your industry or company, you should be disclosing potential impact of tariffs on operations, and if applicable, your results of operations and financial condition,”
Lara Long
Riveron managing director, accounting advisory
Should the Supreme Court rule that many of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, businesses could be entitled to a refund from the federal government, but it’s anyone’s guess how that would work.
“No one knows what that looks like,” Fleeger said. “Rest assured, it won’t be straightforward.”
Plus, even if the high court rules against the tariffs as they exist today, the administration likely has other avenues to impose the levies.
All that’s to say tariffs likely won’t be out of the picture anytime soon. In the meantime, whether publicly traded or privately held, companies need to be transparent about any possible effects of tariffs, panelists said.
“I think the key here is that you have to be cognizant that, regardless of your industry or company, you should be disclosing potential impact of tariffs on operations, and if applicable, your results of operations and financial condition,” said Lara Long, Riveron’s managing director, accounting advisory.
As Scee put it: “Investors will remember who told the truth when it was hard to do.”
