Apollo’s Rowan says trade war has made U.S. ‘merely exceptional’

“We are the freest-trading country in the world,” Rowan said Monday in a Bloomberg interview from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. “It is not clear to me that we have to be, or that we should allow allies and strategic competitors to inhibit our access to their markets.”  

Rowan, CEO of the alternative asset manager since 2021, was a top contender for Treasury secretary before the role was given to hedge fund manager Scott Bessent. 

The Apollo CEO struck a careful balancing act between siding with President Donald Trump, while urging the government to quell unrest that has unsettled markets and business plans across the US. 

The president’s fast-changing shifts on tariff policies spurred swings across asset classes last month. The S&P 500 plunged more than 12% in four sessions after Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement. He has since issued a 90-day pause on many of the harshest levies. 

Rowan fell short of explicitly stating that a recession was brewing, but made clear that it was possible.

“We likely will cause two quarters of negative growth if we in fact do not solve the uncertainty,” Rowan said. 

Public markets — particularly credit markets — are more brittle than they seem, he cautioned.

“The biggest buildup of risk I see in the world is we are brought up with the expectation of being able to trade everything every day,” Rowan said. 

With more geopolitical tumult, he said Apollo is shifting away from equity bets on companies that are “growthy and venture-y” to focus more on cash flows.

The erratic nature of Trump’s tariff threats has ultimately taken a toll on the US, according to Rowan, whose firm oversees $785 billion of assets. 

“We have done damage to the US brand — the brand for stability, predictability, regularity, ” he said. “I see us moving from what was hyper-exceptionalism to merely exceptional.”