Trump’s immigration roundups have major sneaker company scared

The real-world and immediate ramifications of President Donald Trump’s policies are just starting to be felt for some of the world’s name-brand companies.

One of them is Puma, the German sportswear company, whose stock has been tumbling since around the beginning of the year. Why? The Bullwark acquired internal communications that show immigration and tariffs have had a negative effect.

One slide we obtained noted that the company sales had “stumbled badly into 2025” due to both trade disputes and “immigration fears.” It noted that Puma sales had been hit disproportionately by “Hispanic Hibernation,” a term “coined to reflect the real impact of fear across the country that is keeping people in their homes, affecting consumption that is not being made up online.” That same slide deck included a CNN article noting that the Dow had fallen by almost 900 points after Trump declined to rule out a recession.

The Bulwark reported that Puma will eliminate 500 jobs, with an undermined amount from the United States, by mid-April.

Here’s a recent Associated Press article from Wednesday on the latest with the stock market:

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street keeps shaking because of tariffs. Stocks jumped to a big early gain, gave it back and then went up again as a volatile week for the market rolls on.

The competing drivers of the market were an encouraging inflation update and the retaliation by other countries following President Donald Trump’s latest escalation in his trade war.

The S&P 500 was up 0.6% in afternoon trading after completely erasing an initial leap of 1.3% and then regaining some ground. The unsettled trading comes a day after the index briefly fell more than 10% below its all-time high set last month.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average also swung sharply, pinging between a gain of 287 points and a loss of 423. It was down 36 points, or 0.1%, as of 1:10 p.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% higher. The Nasdaq held up much better because of gains for Nvidia, Tesla and AI-related companies.

Dragging the market lower were U.S. companies that could be set to feel pain because of Trump’s trade war. Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel’s whiskey, tumbled 6.9%, and Harley-Davidson sank 5.6%.

U.S. bourbon and motorcycles are just two of the products the European Union is targeting with its own tariffs announced Wednesday. The moves were in response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum that kicked in earlier in the day.

“We deeply regret this measure,” European Union President Ursula von der Leyen said. “Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and worse for consumers.”

The question hanging over Wall Street is how much pain Trump will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies in order to get what he wants. He’s said he wants manufacturing jobs back in the United States, along with a smaller U.S. government workforce, more deportations and other things.

Even if Trump ultimately goes with milder tariffs than feared, damage could still be done. The dizzying barrage of on -again- off -again announcements on tariffs has already begun sapping confidence among U.S. consumers and businesses by ramping up uncertainty. That in itself could cause U.S. households and businesses to pull back on spending, which would hurt the economy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report