Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman urged Donald Trump to call a temporary time out on his reciprocal tariffs over the weekend, while also acknowledging that he may have misjudged the president as he “assumed economic rationality would be paramount.”
The Pershing Square Capital Management CEO posted a lengthy message to social media on Sunday, where he admitted the tariffs make America look bad and even warned of a possible “economic nuclear winter.”
“The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust,” he began his X post. “President Donald Trump has elevated the tariff issue to the most important geopolitical issue in the world, and he has gotten everyone’s attention. So far, so good. And yes, other nations have taken advantage of the U.S. by protecting their home industries at the expense of millions of our jobs and economic growth in our country.”
“But, by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital,” Ackman continued. “The president has an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country. If, on the other hand, on April 9 we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.”
“What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war? I don’t know of one who will do so,” he added. “When markets crash, new investment stops, consumers stop spending money, and businesses have no choice but to curtail investment and fire workers. And it is not just the big companies that will suffer. Small and medium-size businesses and entrepreneurs will experience much greater pain. Almost no business can pass through an overnight massive increase in costs to their customers. And that’s true even if they have no debt, and, unfortunately, there is a massive amount of leverage in the system.”
