Companies are pulling their guidance in droves amid US President Donald Trump’s game of back and forth with tariffs.
Last week, Walmart pulled its first quarter guidance over the fracas. Hours later, Trump rescinded many tariffs but increased those on goods from China to a total of 145 percent. Delta Airlines also backpedaled guidance given ‘current uncertainty’.
Trump appears to be testing the idiom coined by Benjamin Franklin – ‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’ – upon completing the US Constitution.
Those taxes are now entirely uncertain, as is the outlook for the majority of publicly traded companies in the US and abroad that will be affected by Trump’s vacillations.
The midst of this chaos seems like an opportunity to introduce myself. I am Talia Samuelson, the new journalist here at Governance Intelligence. It is my hope to report on the tumult and bring a bit of clarity to the confusion.
Though I am American, in a previous life, I was a reporter in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which unforeseeably was excellent training for the current Trump era. Argentina is where I got my first taste of reporting on financial uncertainty, runaway inflation and very unpopular tariffs that drove away international operations.
During that time, I worked for the English language division of the platform Infobae, which was founded by a journalist 20 years ago and has since become one of the most read news sources in the country and for Spanish speakers abroad. A few of the things that happened during my tenure include the fight to legalize abortion, the election of Mauricio Macri and the exit of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the elimination of the blue dollar, one of many deals with the IMF and of course, inflation.
I used to think that a move to the UK would mean I never wrote about inflation again – clearly, I do not have a career as a fortune teller.
I have since reported on compliance in both Latin America and Europe, focusing on gambling, sports betting and the process to legalize online gaming in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.
In this new role, I hope that we will explore together what is frankly the unknown presented by the second Trump administration and what it will mean for corporate governance during his time in office.
Talia Samuelson
Talia Samuelson is a reporter for Governance Intelligence. She previously worked as a journalist in Buenos Aires and has covered compliance in Latin America.
