The 2026 proxy season is the clearest look yet at how this economy actually works. Companies are quietly rewriting their executive bonus metrics mid-cycle to exclude tariff impacts — adjusted EBITDA, adjusted operating income, adjusted until the payout math works again. Axon did it. Caleres did it. More are coming. The tariff uncertainty was apparently too unpredictable to hold executives accountable for.
The same uncertainty has hit small businesses for 13 consecutive months of job losses. The average American household is paying $1,500 more this year in tariff taxes. There’s no adjustment committee for that.
These are the same companies that back the political machine that built the tariff regime. They lobbied for the conditions. When those conditions started touching their compensation packages, they had lawyers on the phone inside a quarter. The chaos was always meant for someone else — workers, small business owners, anyone who doesn’t have a comp committee.