Here's how tariffs are hitting consumer brands from Coca-Cola to Amazon

Business Insider

04-05-2025

Major consumer and retail brands are reporting the effects of tariffs in their earnings calls.
Some are seeing higher costs on imports, especially from China.
Others are seeing less-direct effects, such as Mexican consumers avoiding American brands.
For some companies, tariffs present a clear, if difficult, problem: Goods made in other countries, especially China, are now more expensive to bring to bring into the US. For brands and retailers to protect their profit margins, that will mean hiking the prices that shoppers pay.
Other brands import far less to the US, but are seeing people in other countries turn away from their goods due to their connection with America.
Here are some of the ways that tariffs are affecting some of the biggest consumer brands and retailers, as spotted in the latest round of earnings reports.
Adidas
Adidas, which is based in Germany, warned on Tuesday that the prices of almost all of its products will go up in the US under the current tariffs.
The reason? Adidas "currently cannot produce almost any of our products in the US," CEO Bjrn Gulden said.
"Should the duties stay, then of course, there will be price increases in the US market," Gulden said during the sneaker maker's earnings call.
Amazon said in earnings on Thursday that it's "maniacally focused" on keeping prices low even with tariffs in place. CEO Andy Jassy pointed to Amazon's wide product selection as an advantage for consumers looking to save money or hunting for a particular product as supply chains are squeezed.
At the same time, whether prices go up or not also relies on what the over two million third-party sellers on Amazon's platform decide to do, Jassy added.
Amazon did book $1 billion in one-time costs for its first quarter. Some of the charges came after the company brought in some inventory earlier than planned to minimize its tariff bill.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Amazon after Punchbowl News reported that the e-commerce giant planned to break out how much tariffs were contributing to price increases for shoppers. Leavitt called the proposal a "hostile and political act" on Amazon's part.
Amazon later said that it never approved the plan and only considered it for Haul, an Amazon website that competes with Temu and other sites that source products directly from China.
Retail analysts told Business Insider that the White House's comments are likely to make retailers think twice about how they disclose the costs of tariffs to shoppers.
Coca-Cola
Tariffs' effects on Coca-Cola are "manageable," CEO James Quincey said in an earnings call on Tuesday.
That's because many of the ingredients that its bottling facilities use source locally and only import a few inputs such as machinery.
But tariffs and broader backlash against the US are still taking a toll on the company, Quincey said.
Coca-Cola saw its sales slip among hispanic consumers in the US and parts of Mexico near the US border, Quincey said. "Some of the geopolitical tension was just causing people to be a little more cautious with their spend," he said.
In response, Coca-Cola is emphasizing its local operations in Mexico through an ad campaign it calls "Hecho en Mxico," or "Made in Mexico."
Hasbro
Trump's tariffs could hit toy sales with a force "consistent with what happened with the 2008 and 2009 recession," Hasbro CEO Christian Cocks said in late April.
Toy industry sales dropped by "mid-single digits" during the Great Recession, Cocks said.
Tariffs could also hit Hasbro's net profit by between $60 million and $180 million in 2025, the CEO said.