During the 2024 presidential election, many people warned that Donald Trump, a 78-year-old former reality TV star with an extensive track record of failed businesses, was not the person best equipped to handle the American economy. For some reason, billionaire Bill Ackman did not believe them. Instead, he endorsed Trump during the 2024 campaign, going on to make very public vows of confidence in Trump’s leadership. Now, for his efforts, Ackman and others of his ilk have been rewarded with a very special prize: a cratering stock market and the worst economic downturn since the 2008 financial crisis.
Ackman’s apparent regret has been on full display for the past 48 hours or so, as the billionaire has tweeted his way through the stock market’s increasingly dire collapse. “To state the obvious, it does not help our country’s and our president’s negotiating position to be trying to strike deals while our market is collapsing,” the billionaire wrote flailingly on Sunday. “Whoever is recommending that idea to President @realDonaldTrump should be fired now.”
Indeed, Ackman seems to have been under the delusion that Trump was only using the threat of tariffs to bring various nations to the negotiating table for trade deals. Since it has become apparent that Trump really doesn’t know or care whether he’s bluffing or not, Ackman’s tune has changed drastically, and he seems to be about two tweets away from a coronary. He is in good company. Lots of folks on Wall Street are freaking out right now, and other members of the billionaire class have come out to disavow the White House’s economic policy.
“By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are 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,” Ackman worried on Sunday. “The president has an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.”
Ackman went on: “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.”
The Financial Times reported Monday that Ackman’s primary investment fund, Pershing Square Holdings, has seen a 15 percent drop in shares this year. The fund’s holdings in “Nike, Mexican-style fast-food chain Chipotle, asset manager Brookfield and Alphabet have taken the biggest hits since the start of the year,” FT writes.
https://t.co/tTxLfGaSdi pic.twitter.com/TrM2i2Si2k
— Woke Putin 📉 (@ripplebrain) April 7, 2025
Other wealthy individuals and former Trump supporters have come out of the woodwork to criticize the administration’s tariff policy, which is largely credited for one of the most dramatic market downturns of the past fifty years.
Elon Musk, Trump’s DOGE, has very quietly expressed concern over the tariff policies, while his brother, Kimbal Musk, has been more openly critical: “Who would have thought that Trump was actually the most high tax American President in generations. Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer,” the Musk brother recently posted on X.
Meanwhile, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has made efforts to get into Trump’s good graces in recent months, has said that the tariffs could depress the stock market by another 20 percent. “Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now,” Fink told the Economic Club of New York on Monday.
Billionaire Ken Fisher, who was once listed as one of Trump’s backers, also came out to blast the tariff policy this week, calling it “stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools.”
One would have to assume that there are other plutocrats who are currently kicking themselves over their previous support for Trump, as a new report claims that the world’s richest people (including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) saw their net worth plunge by over $200 billion in the course of a day due to the tariffs. The sympathy they deserve is, of course, limited. After all, you know what they say: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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