President Trump thus far has faced limited public critiques from Republican allies on his tariff plans. His top aides have not been so lucky.
Questions surrounding leading economic members of Trump’s White House team reached new heights in recent days as a tariff rollout notable for questionable math and mixed messaging helped lead to a market rout that continued to escalate Monday, even as the president and his team remained defiant.
Read more: The latest news and updates as Trump’s tariffs take effect
The questions being raised publicly include some by a few of Trump’s closest allies like Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and investor Bill Ackman.
These pointed remarks come as opposition to Trump’s tariff maneuvers grows on Capitol Hill and Wall Street strategists abandon their previous bullishness, with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon warning in his annual shareholder letter of slower growth because of tariffs in a section titled “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Elon Musk looks on during a cabinet meeting at the White House in March. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) ·BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images
What Trump and his team have offered in response, in a flurry of comments that continued apace on Monday, are claims that more than 50 countries have reached out to begin negotiations, without offering clarity about whether they are open to negotiations.
Trump himself said Sunday that he was focused on trade deficits above all else but then offered Monday that other trade practices could be open to negotiation.
Top Trump adviser Elon Musk weighed in over the weekend to respond to comments defending the tariffs from Harvard-trained White House senior counselor for trade Peter Navarro.
Musk posted that “a PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing” and went even further in a now-deleted post where he used an expletive to say Navarro hasn’t built anything.
Navarro then responded in a TV appearance denying a rift but saying that “Elon sells cars [and] he’s simply protecting his own interests.”
Another notable schism in recent days was seen between Pershing Square Capital (PSHZF) CEO Bill Ackman, a vocal Trump defender throughout the campaign, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Bill Ackman applauds during a speech by President Donald Trump at the Economic Club of New York in 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
In his own series of posts, Ackman first accused Lutnick of being “indifferent” to the economy crashing, then backtracked and called his critique unfair.
But that was quickly followed by yet another post, where Ackman slammed the formula that Trump’s team used to calculate the tariffs, writing, “the President’s advisors need to acknowledge their error.”
Kevin Hassett, the director of Trump’s National Economic Council, pushed back against Ackman’s posts in a Fox News interview Monday by saying, “I would urge everyone, especially Bill, to ease off the rhetoric a little bit.”
But that formula Trump’s team used, which was based on trade deficits and not “tariffs charged to the U.S.A. — including currency manipulation and trade barriers,” as Trump claimed in his announcement, has been a noted point of criticism.
Another closely followed investing voice, Daniel Loeb, posted a critique of the formula and added it “will be a test of the administration’s judgment versus ideology how they resolve this.”
Musk has also nudged Lutnick in multiple posts in recent days, including amplifying a meme that compared the recent market sell-off to the US Army landing at Omaha Beach during World War II.
In that video, Tesla is compared to a soldier being mowed down by enemy fire and a higher-ranking member of the army is compared to Lutnick — standing amid the carnage with a claim the market shock was a “good thing.”
A third notable critique in recent days has come from legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller — who once trained now-Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Druckenmiller offered in a rare social media post that he does “not support tariffs exceeding 10%,” which Bessent himself has defended again and again in recent days.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend, Bessent again called tariffs a one-time price adjustment and added, “There’s a big difference between insipid, endemic inflation within the system and consistent price level increases and a one-time adjustment.”
Bessent himself struck a very different tone early last year before he got closely involved with Trump’s campaign when he wrote to his hedge fund that “tariffs are inflationary and would strengthen the dollar — hardly a good starting point for a US industrial renaissance.”
The worries about Trump’s team have also come in from an array of financial observers.
“On Saturday morning, I nearly gagged on my bagel listening to a CNN interview with Peter Navarro,” Yardeni Research said in a Monday morning note, specifically referencing a push by Navarro and others to downplay stock market losses.
“I have news for them: Wall Street is Main Street,” the note added.
The waves of criticism come as Trump’s team has faced withering questions while trying to defend the tariffs and their rollout.
One particularly intense example Sunday saw Hassett parry questions on ABC News’ “This Week,” immediately followed by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who said, “This is a moment of testing for the president’s advisers. The intellectually honest ones know that this reflects presidential 40-year fixation, not any kind of proven economic theory.”
A White House spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment from Yahoo Finance as to whether Trump still has confidence in his economic team.
Meanwhile, the appearances keep coming, with Navarro on Monday appearing on CNBC and Hassett speaking to Fox News to try and boost markets.
“Don’t get panicked out by all of this,” Navarro said, calling the growing talk of a recession “silly.”
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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