Trump’s tariffs spark debate on LinkedIn

Engagement surges: more than just chatter

That conversation only grew. A total of 9,304 posts involving 5,975 users and 1,776 companies generated over 38,000 reactions. These numbers speak to more than just curiosity—they reflect genuine concern and strategic recalibration happening in real time across industries. It’s not just political news anymore; it’s business-critical information.

Note: The study stopped on April 6, but even now, the topic is still growing — 5,675 posts on the 7th and more than 4,000 on the 8th at 4pm.

Who's talking-and where they come from

The conversation is pretty diverse, cutting across sectors like finance, government, tech, and transport. This LinkedIn activity map shows a strong presence from industries usually leading global economic policy. Not surprisingly, finance, tech, and government-related accounts are the most active and influential—showing where the biggest stakes are and which sectors really lean into LinkedIn.

Finance & legal: Markets on edge

Voices in the finance and legal sectors zeroed in on key concerns: market volatility, investor uncertainty, and the risk of a recession in the U.S. These discussions weren’t just theoretical—they often referenced real-time stock movements and central bank responses. Institutions like the Fed and ECB were frequently mentioned, as financial actors tried to anticipate policy shifts and monetary countermeasures.

Government & non-profits: Global stability in focus

From the public sector and NGOs, the conversation shifted toward geopolitics. Many users stressed the importance of European unity and reshoring critical industries. Interestingly, several noted that Russia appeared "mysteriously spared" by these tariffs—a detail that sparked speculation and calls for transparency. Amid the tension, there were also calls for diplomacy and open channels between global leaders.

Tech sector: Collateral damage

The technology world reacted with alarm. For many companies—especially startups—the tariffs could mean higher costs and delayed access to critical components from Asia, particularly Taiwan and China. Some warned of a slowdown in AI development, where hardware dependencies run deep. The vulnerability of small, fast-moving companies stood in contrast to the resilience of larger players, raising concerns about innovation inequality.

Methodology:

We used Visibrain as our partner to collect LinkedIn posts. Along with the posts, Visibrain also provides some details about the authors—like their number of followers, engagement metrics, and their headline.

We also had access to posts from official company accounts, but we chose not to include those in this study. The focus here is more on what real people are saying, rather than what media or companies want to promote.

For many users, we could figure out their job and sector based on their headline. But since a lot of headlines aren’t very informative, we filled in the gaps using the official job title and employer listed on their profile. Since companies have to declare their sector, we can reliably match users to the sectors of known LinkedIn companies.

That gave us the foundation to create links between people:
- Users with similar keywords in their headline or job title are connected by a weak link (like anyone with “data analysis” in their job name).
- Users working in the same sector share a strong link.

And that’s our base!

The rest works like most social network maps:
- Links between two users pull them closer together (using Force Atlas 2).
- Users with lots of shared links end up grouped and colored the same
- The size of each user node is based on how many followers they have.

Once the final map is generated, we run stats on each community to see what different sectors are talking about—and who they’re working for (spoiler: J.P. Morgan shows up A LOT in the Finance cluster!)...

We could have completed the presentation with a slide for each sector, but chose to keep this article "small" to include some methodology, but feel free to ask questions or for more information if you’re interested!