The news: Growing economic pressure on US consumers and an increasingly fluid trade and regulatory environment are reshaping US companies’ business strategies as they find stronger growth abroad.

• While Colgate-Palmolive’s North American organic sales fell 3.0% in Q2, every other market delivered positive growth, with Europe, Middle East, and Africa sales rising 2.0%, Asia-Pacific sales up 5.2%, and Latin America increasing 5.3%.
• At Kraft Heinz, North American organic sales fell 2.0% through the first half of the year and developed international markets declined a more modest 0.4%, while emerging markets rose 6.1%.
• Though Kimberly-Clark’s North American organic sales were in the black during the first six months of the year, at 0.5%, that was well behind the 2.5% growth of its international sales.

Restaurant results show a similar divergence. Yum Brands-owned KFC’s only markets without positive first-half growth were the US and Canada, while the company reported double-digit growth in several regions, including Middle East/Turkey/North Africa (19%), India (16%), Latin America (11%), and Asia (10%). The same effect was less pronounced but still evident at McDonald’s, where Q2 international same-store sales grew 1.3% compared with 0.8% in the US—its slowest domestic growth rate in over a year. That contributed to the company shaking up its US leadership team and naming an international veteran to run its domestic market.

Why is this happening? Uncertainty has cast a long shadow over the US business environment since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, bringing shifting trade and regulatory policies that have made long-term planning increasingly difficult.

• The Tax Foundation has logged more than 60 entries in its tariff timeline, which tracks and models the impact of the administration’s trade policies, since January 2025.
• CEOs in the Americas are more likely than their global peers to cite macroeconomic volatility and regulatory or policy uncertainty as the most significant risks to their business over the next 12 months, per EY-Parthenon.

Implications for restaurants and brands: US economic weakness and policy uncertainty are giving companies more incentive to seek growth abroad as a sizable share of US consumers—including affluent ones—trade down to private labels or eat out less. That helps explain why Starbucks, whose international company-operated comparable store sales grew 5.7% last quarter, added 189 net new international coffeehouses during the period. CEO Brian Niccol noted during the company’s earnings call that “we expect international to be a meaningful contributor to unit growth.”

Companies see untapped potential abroad, further fueling the push. Chipotle last month opened its first restaurant in Mexico, with plans to add more locations this year. While that particular move may carry more risk than other markets, it also gives Chipotle another avenue for growth as its US business comes under pressure.