A Donald Trump billionaire donor urged the American president to suspend his recently announced commercial prices or to risk “an self-induced economic nuclear winter”.
The head of hedge funds, Bill Ackman, who supported Trump before the 2024 presidential election, said the president should take three months to allow countries to renegotiate their trade relations with the United States.
The equity prices in Europe and Asia continued to fall on Monday, while the markets react to the world scanning prices that Trump announced last week.
Despite shock waves, the American president defended his new import taxes, saying “sometimes you have to take medication to repair something”.
He says that this decision will strengthen his country with new jobs and new investments, but economists warn that prices could increase for Americans and trigger a trade war.
Mr. Ackman, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square Hedge Fund Management Company, became a very publicized supporter of Trump, a Republican, in July 2024.
He had previously supported the Rival Democratic Party, and his intervention was considered an important electoral approval of the business world.
On Monday, Mr. Ackman’s warning was taken over by another Wall Street figurine, with Jpmorgan Chase president Jamie Dimon, saying that Trump’s prices were likely to raise prices for the Americans.
Look: “Sometimes you have to take medication to repair something” – Trump defends prices
In his article on X on Sunday, Mr. Ackman recognized Trump’s argument that the global trade system had “disadvantaged” the United States.
But, he wrote, prices that Trump had imposed were “massive and disproportionate” and did not distinguish between American friends and enemies.
In his announcements last week, Trump announced a “basic” rate of 10% on imports in the United States, with higher rates up to 50% faced with dozens of other countries – including a number of major manufacturing centers in Asia.
Many countries have promised to react, and China has already retaliated with new own prices on goods imported from the United States.
Trump had launched an “economic war against the whole world at the same time” which was likely to break the confidence of investors in the United States, said Ackman.
Ackman said that the US leader now had “the opportunity to call 90 days, negotiate and resolve unjust asymmetrical tariff agreements and induce billions of new investments in our country”.
His post said on Sunday that he thought that the ball was back in Trump’s courtyard – after a previous message on X, which urged the leaders of other countries to “drop the phone” to conclude an agreement with Trump.
While stock markets around the world are continuing their crisis on Monday, the head of the banking giant Jpmorgan Chase offered his own catch, warning of “many uncertainties” around the new prices policy.
In a letter to the shareholders, Mr. Dimon declared that the prices “will probably increase inflation and force a lot to consider a greater probability of recession”.
“The more quickly, this problem is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be difficult to reverse,” he wrote.
Trump officials have minimized the risk of recession. The reference rate of 10% is already in force, the higher rates faced with certain countries which come into force on Wednesday.
Speaking aboard the presidential plane on a return flight to Washington DC on Sunday, Trump himself said that European and Asian countries were dying to conclude an agreement. “
The American secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, says that there is “no reason” to expect a recession
