Business uncertainty moved from a planning variable to a daily constraint in 2025, and it’s still shaping decisions in 2026—especially for middle-market companies dealing with shifting tariff policy, fragile supply chains, sticky inflation, and the unclear productivity payoff from heavy AI investment.
PYMNTS Intelligence’s Certainty Project, drawing on nine surveys of CFOs at U.S. middle-market firms ($100 million–$1 billion in annual revenue) conducted from February 2024 through late November 2025, finds that the headline level of uncertainty barely changed year over year (26% of CFOs reporting high uncertainty in 2025 vs. 29% in 2024). Underneath that average is a split: goods businesses felt uncertainty climb as tariffs moved from threat to reality, while services businesses saw conditions stabilize across many segments.
That uncertainty shows up as measurable financial drag and a shift toward defense. Among firms operating under high uncertainty, 53% said uncertainty reduced revenue over the prior 12 months (vs. 8% at low-uncertainty firms), and CFOs in the high-uncertainty group estimated an average 6% revenue hit—double the cost reported by medium-uncertainty firms. Exposure to international suppliers amplifies the strain: 18% of companies with only domestic suppliers reported high uncertainty, compared with 33% for firms with 40% or more of suppliers overseas, and more than half of CFOs with low confidence in their ability to adapt to tariff-related disruptions reported high uncertainty.
Heading deeper into 2026, fewer than a quarter of high-uncertainty firms expect revenue growth, and priorities skew toward supply chain and cash-flow protection rather than new investment—while customer experience rises as a bigger focus for those firms.
