Bill Ackman has outperformed the stock market over the past five years with Pershing Square Capital Management. The hedge fund chief was an advocate for Donald Trump during the campaign but doesn’t agree with the president’s stance on tariffs.
Stock market participants have been fleeing the market amid tariffs. The president’s reciprocal tariffs scared investors the most, causing the Nasdaq Composite to plunge by more than 10% from between April 2 and Friday.
“When markets crash, new investments stop, [and] consumers stop spending money,” Ackman said in an X post.
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Ackman started his X post by asserting that the U.S. has been taken advantage of for too long. He is a fan of tariffs and likes that Trump elevated the issue. He also wrote that other nations have used tariffs to protect their home industries at the cost of American jobs.
The U.S. has used tariffs before Trump, and some of them are recent. For instance, the Biden administration imposed a 100% tariff on electric vehicles and a 25% tariff on lithium-ion batteries.
Tariffs can protect certain industries and workers. Ackman believes that leveraging tariffs can strengthen the country and likes a moderate approach.
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Ackman changed his tune when he saw the blanket reciprocal tariff rates spread across allies and adversaries. He believes tariffing every country can make the U.S. a less reliable trading partner and prompt international businesses to avoid the U.S. He proposed that Trump call a 90-day timeout to avoid economic carnage.
“Business investments will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocketbooks, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” Ackman explained.
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Trump has moved swiftly since reclaiming the Oval Office. He isn’t taking a gradual approach and has filled the stock market with uncertainty. While Ackman is worried about high tariffs, some of the people who replied to his X post didn’t feel the same way.