Billionaire Trump warns over tariffs
Billionaire Trump Warns A Donald Trump donor worth a billion dollars has asked the US president to suspend recently imposed trade tariffs or face “self-induced economic nuclear winter.” During market mayhem, hedge fund boss Bill Ackman said the president should give three months’ space to enable countries to renegotiate their trade dealings with the US.
On Monday, another big-name Wall Street figure, JPMorgan Chase Chairman Jamie Dimon, echoed Ackman’s warning that Trump’s tariffs might trigger higher prices for Americans.
Despite the chaos, the US president has been defending his new import duties, saying that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
>He asserts that the measure will energize his nation with fresh jobs and investment but that economists say prices may increase for Americans and start a trade war.
Stock markets across Europe and Asia
Stock markets across Europe and Asia continued their dive on Monday as markets responded to the broad range of global tariffs unveiled by Trump last week.
In his X post on Sunday, Mr. Ackman accepted Trump’s contention that the world trading system had “harmed” America.
But they were “massive and disproportionate” tariffs, he wrote, and did not differentiate between American friends and foes.
Mr. Ackman, billionaire founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square, became a high-profile backer of Trump, the Republican, in July 2024.
The business world widely saw his entry as a key electoral endorsement by endorsing the Democratic Party, Trump’s competitor, earlier.
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In his statements last week, Trump revealed a “base” 10% tariff on imports into the US, with higher levels of up to 50% for dozens more nations, including several of Asia’s biggest manufacturing centers.
Dozens of countries have vowed to retaliate, and China already has done so with new tariffs on US goods.
Trump had declared an economic war
Trump had declared an “economic war against the entire world at once” that threatened to blow up investor confidence in the US, Mr. Ackman said.
The US leader now had “the ability to call for a 90-day time period, bargain and settle unbalanced asymmetric tariff arrangements, and provoke trillions of dollars of fresh investment in our nation,” Mr. Ackman said.
His Sunday tweet had suggested he thought the ball was back in Trump’s court after a previous X message called for other world leaders to “take the lead” in coming to an agreement with Trump.
With global stock markets continuing their descent on Monday, the CEO of banking giant JPMorgan Chase weighed in himself, predicting “many uncertainties” around the new tariff policy.
In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Dimon stated that the tariffs “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a higher probability of recession.”
“The sooner this issue is resolved, the better, because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be difficult to reverse,” he wrote.
Trump aides have played down the threat of a recession.
The government has already imposed the initial 10% tariff, and it will become effective on Wednesday for some nations.
During comments aboard Air Force One during a flight return to Washington, D.C., on Sunday, Trump himself announced that European nations and Asian nations were “desperate to get a deal done.”
