Strategic Intelligence: Tariffs Sentiment Polls - April 2025

Strategic Intelligence: Tariffs Sentiment Polls - April 2025

Summary

This report is based on a set of four polls designed to help understand the business community’s sentiment toward tariffs.

Key Highlights

• In the first 100 days of his second presidential term, Donald Trump blew up eight decades of global trade rules with the imposition of a 10% global baseline and reciprocal tariff framework, plus sizeable tariffs on strategic sectors (steel, aluminum, and automotive-with threats of similar treatment for other metals, lumber, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals).
• The business community’s early sentiment on tariffs is mostly negative, although a sizeable minority sees potential opportunities in their implementation.

• Our sentiment polls ran in April 2025 on GlobalData's Verdict network of B2B websites, which had 10.8 million user sessions in Q1 2025. In total, 1,843 respondents participated in the survey.

• This survey gives a unique insight into the business community's views on tariffs. It provides an early insight into their level of concern about the impact of tariffs on their business and a view of how tariffs are expected to impact the economic outlook over the next 12 months.