A billionaire hedge fund boss who backed Donald Trump has turned on the president warning his tariffs risk an “economic nuclear winter”.
Bill Ackman, a prominent financier and one-time Trump supporter, said the tariffs were a “mistake” and called for a 90-day “time-out” to allow more time to negotiate.
Mr Trump’s trade war has sent the global economy reeling in recent days, with sharp falls in indices overnight in Asia and on Monday morning in the UK and Europe.
He warned Trump’s trade war will hammer small businesses disproportionately and destroy confidence in the US as a trading partner.
“We are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,” he said on X.
“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.
“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.”
Mr Ackman leads top New York hedge fund Pershing Square, one of the world’s largest investment groups. He endorsed Mr Trump for president in last year’s election but denied he did so to win a job in the new administration.
On Monday, he said the US was “100pc behind” Mr Trump’s attempt to fix a system of tariffs that “disadvantaged” America, but warned falling stock markets would force employers to cut back on investments and consumers to reign in spending.
Mr Ackman said that if the US launched an “economic nuclear war on every country in the world” then business investment will “grind to a halt”.
“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 said.
He added: “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.
“Business is a confidence game. The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president – in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress – are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for.”
