Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman / Facebook
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman has lost confidence in President Donald Trump due to what he feels are excessive tariffs imposed by the President on just about the entire world. This makes Ackman another member of the growing chorus of Trump supporters who seem to be already suffering buyer’s remorse less than three months into Trump’s second term of office.
Bill Ackman expressed his disappointment in an extended post on Twitter.
“The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country,” he wrote. “But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.”
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Bill Ackman also acknowledged that other nations have taken advantage of America by protecting their home industries at the expense of “millions of our jobs and economic growth in our country.”
However, Ackman went on to explain that by placing what he called “massive and disproportionate” tariffs on both Ameri’s “friends and enemies alike” and President Trump has launched a “global economic war against the whole world at once,” and that this mean the US is 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.”
Bill Ackman called on President Trump to implement a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve “unfair asymmetric tariff deals,” and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in “our country.”
But he also issued a warning.
“If, on the other hand, on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” wrote Bill Ackman.
He also ponded what, if any, CEO or board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term, economic commitments in the US in the middle of what Ackman called “an economic nuclear war?”
“I don’t know of one who will do so,” he said adding that, “When markets crash, new investment stops, consumers stop spending money, and businesses have no choice but to curtail investment and fire workers.”
Small and medium size businesses and entrepreneurs will experience “much greater pain,” than the big businesses, asserted Ackman, because, as he explained, almost no business can pass through an overnight massive increase in costs to their customers.
Finally, Bill Ackman issued a harsh critique od Donald Trump saying, “The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. 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.”
In a dire warning, Bill Ackman wrote that the President has an opportunity on Monday to “call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system.”
However, should Trump fail to do so, America is heading for a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail.”
