Tariffs have arrived, and the stock market has noticed.
President Donald Trump introduced broad levies on imports for countries around the world on April 2, dramatically impacting the future price of goods across sectors, and sending the stock market careening into uncharted territory.
The Dow Jones has dropped more than 9% since the latest round of tariffs were introduced, and the S&P 500 is down more than 10% over the same time period. The tariffs are all but guaranteed to increase the price of many goods, leading to inflation and a spending pullback for already-pinched consumers. That’s why several economists and analysts are warning of the increased likelihood of a recession.
Business leaders have largely remained silent over the past few months amid other major policy changes from the Trump administration. But the stock market route over the past few days seems to have spurred them into action, and several high-profile names in business and finance are now giving public dire warnings about the effect that the new levies could have on the economy.
Here’s what they’re saying.
Bill Ackman
Shortly after Trump won November’s election, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management wrote on X that the business community was “giddy with excitement” about the new Trump administration.
“Business leaders are becoming more confident about the country and the economy,” he wrote. “This means they will be making more investments in our future which will drive the economy and the stock market.”
But the billionaire hedge-fund manager felt very differently this week. Ackman called for a 90-day pause in tariffs, and warned that if President Trump doesn’t reverse his decision, the country is headed for a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter.”
“[B]y 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,” he wrote.
Howard Marks
The billionaire co-chairman of Oaktree Capital said in an interview over the weekend that he’s witnessing the biggest change in the financial environment in his entire career. He added that that the country has entered a new financial era, marked by distrust for allies and enemies alike.
“We’ve gone from free trade and world trade and globalization to this system, which implies significant restrictions on trade in every direction, and a step toward isolation for the United States,” he said on Bloomberg Television.
Marks went on to attribute the past few decades of economic prosperity to a global policy of free trade that began in the 1940s.
“I believe that the last 80 years, since World War II, have been the best economic period in the history of mankind,” he said. “I think we have truly had a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ and trade was a big part of that.”
Stanley Druckenmiller
The famous investor previously said in a January interview that he was no fan of tariffs, mentioning the risk of retaliation from other countries if the U.S. were to increase levies.
However, Druckenmiller said that if the U.S. stayed in the 10% range, the risks were “overblown relative to the rewards.” He went on to say that he would prefer tariffs to other government methods of raising money, like an income tax.
On Sunday, Druckenmiller responded to a clip of that interview that resurfaced on social media platform X, writing: “I do not support tariffs exceeding 10%.”
Daniel Loeb
The founder of hedge fund Third Point shared an article on Saturday from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank titled: “President Trump’s Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It’s Also Based on an Error.”
“Thoughtful piece on potential conceptual as well as practical errors that went into the announced tariff policy,” Loeb wrote. “It will be a test of the administration’s judgment versus ideology how they resolve this over the weekend or coming days.”
Jamie Dimon
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase and the most prominent voice for finance in the U.S. wrote his annual letter to shareholders on Monday, taking the opportunity to specifically outline his thoughts on a high tariff regime.
“[W]e are likely to see inflationary outcomes, not only on imported goods but on domestic prices, as input costs rise and demand increases on domestic products,” he wrote.
Dimon’s latest comments are markedly different from earlier statements in January, in which he said people should “get over” their concerns over tariffs because they were good for national security.
Mark Cuban
The billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of Cost Plus Drugs warned in a Bluesky post on Saturday that if the Trump administration does not reverse course on the tariffs, the country could experience an economic stress even more intense than the Great Recession. “If the new tariffs stay in place for multiple years, and are enforced and inflationary, and DOGE continues to cut and fire, we will be in a far worse situation than 2008,” he wrote.
When asked by a fellow Bluesky user what the best case scenario would be, Cuban responded that Trump would ideally eliminate most of the tariffs on Monday, leaving a 10% tariff on all countries, which he called “not great, but realistic.”
