Tesla and Alphabet facing tariff uncertainty

As tech’s megacap companies enter first-quarter earnings season this week, get ready to hear one word on repeat: uncertainty.

President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs has created market chaos this month — including five days of massive moves for the Nasdaq — as investors try to gauge the future impact on revenue and earnings for American companies that rely on imports.

Beyond the increase in costs are the follow-on effects, such as the likely drop-off in ad spending that comes with tighter budgets and the potential slowdown in consumer spending that could result from higher prices and rising unemployment.

Trump’s tariffs face almost universal disapproval in the corporate world, which became clear as trillions of dollars in value evaporated in a matter of days, and some of the president’s most vocal supporters, including Elon Musk, expressed opposition.

Beyond being bad for business, the tariff picture changes by the day, making it almost impossible for companies to plan for the future when considering where to manufacture, whether to continue hiring and how aggressively to market products.

On April 9, following four days of market turmoil, Trump dropped tariffs to 10% for most trade partners (while increasing the levy on China to 145%) for 90 days to allow negotiations with those countries. Since then, the Trump administration has signaled that phones, computers and chips would be exempted from the new tariffs, but the president then added to the confusion by casting doubt on the duration of the exemptions, which were viewed as a boon most notably for Apple.

When Tesla kicks off tech earnings on Tuesday, followed by Alphabet on Thursday, executive teams will likely face forward-looking questions that may be difficult to answer.

Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are all slated to report results next week. Chipmaker Nvidia reports in late May.

As of Thursday’s close, the Nasdaq was down 16% for the year and 6% in April. The first quarter was the worst for the index in almost three years.

Here are some of the key issues facing each tech megacap, in order of when they report:

The stock is down 40% for the year so far after closing out its worst quarter since 2022 in March. The big story has been Musk’s many distractions outside of Tesla, most notably his work slashing the federal government as part of the Trump administration.

Tariffs are also a problem, as the…