Bill Ackman has a warning for President Donald Trump: Hit pause on the trade war or risk crashing the economy.
“The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country,” Ackman, the billionaire CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, said in a lengthy post Sunday on X. “But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.”
“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 went on. “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.”
“Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,” he added. “May cooler heads prevail.”
Ackman’s warning came after Trump’s announcement last week of sweeping tariffs on almost every American trading partner sent stocks to their worst week since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Stocks had their worst day in five years on Thursday, and then did so again on Friday.
And the long missive came shortly before trading in stock futures on Sunday evening pointed toward another bloody day in the markets on Monday. S&P 500 futures quickly sunk 5.3% as premarket trading opened Sunday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 5.4% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 4.3%.
Stocks also fell in Asia. As the red piled up, Ackman took to X again: “There is still time for a ceasefire before millions of people get hurt,” he said.
Trump has struck a defiant tone in reaction to the extended market selloff, saying his tariff policies “will never change.” He stood his ground Sunday evening, writing on his social media site Truth Social: “Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!”