- Mark Cuban is warning that Trump’s tariffs and DOGE cuts could result in long-term pain for the U.S. economy. The billionaire warned the policies could create an economic situation worse than 2008 as global markets continue to reel from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Billionaire Mark Cuban thinks the U.S. could be heading for an economic situation “far worse” than the 2008 financial crisis.
In several posts on Bluesky, Cuban criticized Trump’s sweeping new tariffs and cuts to the federal government, arguing the policies could bring long-term economic pain to the U.S.
“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 said in response to a user’s question about the effects of the tariffs.
Last week, the Trump administration introduced broad tariffs on imports from multiple nations, impacting key manufacturing sectors. The new tariffs ranged from 10% to 50% and were announced on countries “friend and foe.”
While Trump has argued that “a little pain” may be required in the short term to achieve longer-term goals of bringing jobs and manufacturing back to the U.S., the sweeping tariffs have sent the markets into freefall.
On Monday, markets across Asia suffered a historic rout, as major tech stocks cratered. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index plummeted 13.2% on Monday—marking its worst single-day loss since the 1997 handover and erasing nearly all of its gains for 2025.
The selloff hit tech giants hard. Tencent, China’s most valuable listed company, plunged 12.5%, while PC-maker Lenovo saw a staggering 22.9% drop—making it the worst-performing Asia-Pacific firm in the Global 500.
Trump has defended the sweeping tariffs on imports, arguing that jobs and investment will return to the US to make the country “wealthy like never before”.
“Forget markets for a second—we have all the advantages, ”the U.S. president told reporters on Saturday. “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
Despite Trump’s claims of long-term success, the tariffs have stirred up recession fears.
In a research note titled “There Will Be Blood,” JPMorgan’s chief global economist increased the estimated probability of a global recession from 40% to 60% in response to the new tariffs.
Trump risks losing ‘the trust of global business leaders’
Cuban is not the only billionaire to criticize Trump’s tariffs.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, warned that the U.S. is steering itself into a self-inflicted “economic nuclear winter” due to President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.
“Business runs on confidence, and the president is rapidly losing the trust of global business leaders,” Ackman said in a post on X.
“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,” he added.
Cuban suggested the best way to avoid an economic crisis was to pause the more extreme tariffs, leaving the minimum 10% tariffs on global trade, and have Elon Musk’s DOGE stagger its planned cuts to the federal workforce over three years to account for local impact.
‘That slows the economy, reducing interest rates, reducing payments on debt to affordable levels,” he said.
It’s not the first time Cuban has criticized Trump’s economic policies and Musk’s efforts to slash the size of the federal government. Last month, he publicly accused DOGE of trying to make “backdoor” cuts to social security payments with staff cuts and stronger identity-proofing procedures.
Representatives for Cuban and the Trump administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment made by Fortune.