Since President Donald Trump’s election in late 2024, CFO optimism has been on a bit of a roller-coaster ride, rising in the wake of his win, then sinking on tariff fears in the two quarters that followed. That pattern continued in the third quarter, with finance chiefs’ optimism ticking up again, amid a few notable caveats. That’s according to the latest CFO survey conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta.
The survey asks American CFOs each quarter to rate their optimism about the U.S. economy on a scale of 0 to 100. In the third-quarter survey conducted between Aug. 18 and Sept. 5, respondents’ average response grew to 62.9, up from 60.9 in the prior quarter.
The survey also asks finance chiefs to rank their top concerns, and, as in the last two surveys, tariffs and trade policy topped the list. But this time around, perceptions of uncertainty dropped notably among respondents. To wit, uncertainty ranked as the seventh most pressing concern in the third quarter survey, after ranking second place in the second quarter.
John Graham, a finance professor at Duke and director of the survey, attributes that change to some resolution around the extent and severity of Trump’s tariffs. The United Kingdom and the European Union, for instance, have each reached tentative trade deals with the U.S. “It’s not that all uncertainty has been resolved, but some of it has, and it’s been resolved in a non-business-disruptive way, for the most part,” Graham said in an interview.
It bears noting, of course, that Trump’s tariffs remain in legal limbo, which is sure to add in more uncertainty in the weeks ahead. The U.S. Supreme Court in November will hear the Trump administration’s appeals to a pair of lower court rulings that found the president’s tariff regime to be illegal.
For CFO respondents who ranked tariffs as their first- or second-most pressing concern, there was, perhaps unsurprisingly, less optimism about the U.S. economy. On a scale of 0 to 100, such respondents ranked their optimism for the nation’s economy at an average of 59.9. But CFO respondents who weren’t concerned about tariffs logged an average rating of 64.3 on the same scale.
Across the board, though, finance chiefs still expect tariffs to increase prices in the near future. Respondents, on average, said that price growth would be 30% lower this year and 25% lower in 2026 without tariffs, according to the survey. “That’s bigger than [economics] textbook 101 would have predicted on this,” Graham said. “In other words, what we’re seeing is these tariffs are bleeding into the economy more slowly.”
Researchers also asked respondents if their price and cost expectations for 2025 and 2026 had been affected by the implementation of tariffs and accompanying uncertainty. Almost half (46.5%) said price expectations were affected, and 49.6% said cost expectations were affected.
Despite the mixed responses in the survey, Graham said that the survey shows that overall, CFOs are “breathing a little easier.”
“The worst-case scenario has not happened, so they’re just a little more relaxed about that and focused more on business fundamentals,” he said.
The Q3 2025 CFO Survey by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta contains responses from roughly 500 U.S. firms.
