Wall Street’s Willful Delusion: Why Tariffs Will Crush Earnings, Despite the Cheerleading

The second-quarter earnings season is underway, and predictably, the cheerleaders on Wall Street are busy telling investors to ignore the smoldering wreckage of trade policy. According to the consensus spin, tariffs are little more than background noise—minor inconveniences in an otherwise “resilient” corporate earnings landscape. This is precisely the sort of dangerous complacency that precedes financial shocks. The Numbers Wall Street Won’t Acknowledge Let’s dispense with the platitudes and look at the hard numbers. Earnings growth estimates have collapsed—plummeting from 13% in the prior quarter to a dismal 4.8%. That’s the lowest projected year-over-year growth in nearly three years, yet strategists want you to believe this is normal, even bullish. Michael Hans, chief investment officer at Citizens, offers the classic…