73% of U.S. Firms Reporting Tariff Impact Describe Negative Effects

A working paper published Oct. 19, 2026, examines how companies describe the effects of tariffs, export controls and sanctions on their operations. In its U.S. tariff analysis, 73% of firms that reported an impact said the effects were negative. Some domestic producers, however, described gains as competitors faced higher costs.

Among firms that reported a negative tariff impact, 58% cited higher input prices. The figures reflect executives’ descriptions of their businesses in corporate transcripts; they do not establish independently measured changes in profit. The analysis captures what companies said about their experiences, rather than a financial audit of tariff effects.

The 73% figure applies to U.S. firms that reported a tariff impact, not to all companies in the global transcript collection. The 58% figure has a narrower denominator: firms reporting a negative impact. It is not the share of every firm that discussed tariffs.

The analysis covers about 624,000 corporate transcripts from 2008 through 2026, including earnings calls and investor-relations meetings for Chinese companies. The global collection includes roughly 22,000 firms. Those totals describe the full corpus, not the number of U.S. firms affected by tariffs.

Companies also described supply-chain changes from the first quarter of 2025 through the first quarter of 2026. Among origin-destination pairs reported by U.S. firms, 69% had China as the origin. Of those China-origin pairs, 40% named the United States as the destination. Vietnam and Mexico also appeared as destinations.

The supply-chain figures count reported pairs from qualifying firm-quarters, rather than distinct companies. A firm could contribute multiple pairs, so the percentages do not represent the share of U.S. companies that moved operations or suppliers. They describe the origins and destinations executives reported.

A separate import-price analysis estimated that U.S. importers bore 94% of tariff costs from January through August 2025 and 86% in November 2025. Those estimates measure how tariff costs were divided between U.S. importers and foreign exporters. They address a different question from the share of firms reporting negative effects in the transcript analysis.