Wall Street Titans Blast Trump’s Tariffs With Markets Roiled
(Bloomberg) -- Bill Ackman said the US is “heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter.” Boaz Weinstein predicted the “avalanche has really just started.” And Jamie Dimon warned it “may be disastrous in the long run.”
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One by one, many of the biggest names across Wall Street — some of whom supported President Donald Trump during his election bid last year, and others who merely hoped for looser regulation and economic growth under his administration — are speaking out against his decision to unleash expansive tariffs worldwide, plunging global markets into chaos.
The widening criticism comes as Trump offers no indication he’s prepared to claw back a punishing trade overhaul set to begin on April 9. With the S&P 500 falling almost 20% from its most recent peak, the index is on the precipice of the first bear market since 2022. The Nasdaq 100 Index has already breached the level, and at Friday’s close was down about 22% from its most recent high.
Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest US bank, used his closely watched annual shareholder letter to call for a speedy resolution to the uncertainties sparked by the trade policy and warned against a potentially disastrous fragmentation of America’s long-term economic alliances.
“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” Dimon wrote in the letter Monday. While the comments didn’t criticize Trump himself, they are a shift from the support or careful silence that Wall Street has largely deployed since the election.
Weinstein, founder of Saba Capital Management, said on Friday that the trade war threatened to accelerate the selloff in corporate bonds and spur a wave of bankruptcies. Oaktree Capital Management co-Chairman Howard Marks said in a Bloomberg Television interview Friday that the latest tariffs imposed by President Trump helped set off a cascade of unknown — and unknowable — factors for investors to weigh as they choose where to deploy cash. Daniel Loeb, founder of Third Point, said on X that it “will be a test of the administration’s judgment versus ideology how they resolve this” in coming days.
“I strongly believe launching tariffs on April 9th against the entire world — massively in excess of what we are being charged — is a mistake,” Ackman, founder of Pershing Square and vocal Trump supporter, wrote on X, saying in a separate post that “we should start hunkering down” if a “time out” isn’t called on the tariffs.
A 90-day pause is needed to give Trump time to “carefully and strategically resolve our historically unfair global trading position,” Ackman wrote.
For Ackman, the comments mark the sharpest divergence yet by one of the president’s top Wall Street backers, who announced his support for Trump following an attempted assassination on the campaign trail in July.
“I do not support tariffs exceeding 10% which I made abundantly clear in the interview you cite,” Stanley Druckenmiller, the former George Soros protégé and longtime deficit hawk, wrote in a rare X post Sunday expanding on criticisms he made of the policies from a CNBC interview in January. Bloomberg News couldn’t independently verify Druckenmiller’s account.
The comments from Ackman and Druckenmiller add to earlier public writings from Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, who said that “the first order consequences of them will be significantly stagflationary in the US.”
Neither Ackman nor Pershing Square have any margin leverage or other instruments that will create liquidity issues if the market crashes, he said. “We don’t use margin. Never have. Never will.”
Pershing Square only has one investment — Nike Inc. three-year call options — directly affected by the tariffs, a position that represents 1.5% of the firm’s portfolio, he said. Ackman said the firm wouldn’t be “sellers in a declining market,” even as it sees mark-to-market losses should the market crash.
“We will be buyers of great businesses at highly discounted prices which will benefit us and our investors over the long term,” Ackman said.
He said that Trump’s attempt to strike deals while the market is collapsing doesn’t help his negotiating position.
“Whoever is recommending that idea to our president should be fired promptly,” he added.
In the two days following Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement, more than $5 trillion was wiped off the value of all US stocks.
Meanwhile, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci posted on X that the US is about to see “an impending steep recession.”
--With assistance from Natalie Choy and Anshuman Daga.
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