When President Donald Trump was elected to his second term, he made it clear that he would lean heavily on new tariffs. The last year and a half has brought a near-constant stream of tariff changes, spinning an ever more complicated web of rules for companies to navigate as they try to conduct business as usual—and federal courts striking them down have added another layer of uncertainty, forcing companies to repeatedly revise their projections.

With the rapid rise of AI and technology systems that can make projections from an array of data, it is possible—but challenging—for CFOs to stay on top of everything. I spoke with James Bowie, managing director of EY’s Technical Accounting Advisory Group, about how CFOs can work through strategies, forecasts and investor communications through the uncertainty of today’s tariff policies. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

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There were more signs of a slowing economy last week. In July, the U.S. lost 23,000 jobs—far out of line with economists’ predictions of 83,000 new jobs created. The largest cuts came from local government education, retail and finance, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This nudges the unemployment rate down a bit from June—it was 4.1% in July, compared to 4.2% a month earlier—but the labor participation rate, which is the share of people actively employed or seeking positions, was at a more-than-five-year low of 61.4%. Payment processor ADP also reported far fewer new private sector jobs in July than expected: 44,000 jobs created, versus 75,000 expected.

As earnings reports come in, companies are showing the impact of the job market stress on consumers. McDonald’s, which a consumer analyst told Forbes is “meaningfully overindexed to lower income households,” reported a U.S. sales increase of just 0.8% last week—coming from higher prices paid by fewer customers. Wendy’s showed a larger slowdown in its earnings report last week with an 8.2% drop in U.S. sales—resulting from declining traffic and restaurant closures. Forbes senior contributor Jim Osman writes the restaurant chain is also showing signs of deeper issues, slashing its dividend in half and withdrawing its financial outlook for the year.

But for oil companies, business is booming thanks to the ongoing war in Iran. ExxonMobil reported quarterly earnings of $14.5 billion—more than twice what it made a year ago—and Chevron more than quadrupled its quarterly earnings compared to a year ago, posting $12 billion in the quarter. President Donald Trump........

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