Markets

Duties, Bill Ackman attacks Lutnick: 'He makes money while the economy implodes'. Dimon: inflation risk. White House: stronger with Trump

From Bill Ackman to Ray Dalio, protest grows over the impact of Trump's moves

7 April 2025

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. EPA/MICHEL EULER / POOL MAXPPP OUT

4' min read

Key points

Jamie Dimon
Bill Ackman
Ray Dalio
Larry Fink

4' min read

Wall Street's big managers are speaking out against the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs and the damaging consequences on global stock exchanges. And even those who had supported the tycoon during the election campaign are beginning to distance themselves. From Bill Ackman to Ray Dalio to Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon. The White House entrusts an advisor to the president with the retort: 'Trump's policies are making us stronger'.

The ceo of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon warned investors that the turmoil caused by US tariffs and a global trade war could slow growth in the world's largest economy, spur inflation and potentially lead to lasting negative consequences. In his annual letter to shareholders, released Monday after index losses last week wiped trillions of dollars off global stock markets, Dimon expressed concerns about how tariffs would impact America's long-term economic alliances. "The economy is facing significant turbulence (including geopolitics), with the potential upsides of tax reform and deregulation and the potential downsides of tariffs and 'trade wars', persistent inflation, high fiscal deficits and still quite high asset prices and volatility," Dimon wrote.

Jamie Dimon

Dimon, 69, has headed the largest US bank for 19 years and is one of the leading voices in corporate America. "We will probably see inflationary outcomes.... Whether or not the tariff list will cause a recession remains a question, but it will slow growth." Economists at JPMorgan raised the risk of a recession in the US and the world this year from 40 per cent to 60 per cent after US President Donald Trump last week unveiled the steepest trade barriers in 100 years. When asked on Sunday about the drop in markets, Trump said that sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.

Dimon noted the potential for retaliation from other countries and said tariffs could affect economic confidence, investment, capital flows, corporate profits and the dollar. "The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects will increase cumulatively over time and would be difficult to reverse," the ceo wrote. Rates also raise questions about the direction of interest rates, Dimon said. While rates have fallen recently because of the weaker dollar, the prospect of slower growth and a decline in risk appetite could cause rates to rise, he said, referring to the stagflation of the 1970s.

Even expectations of modest US growth, known as a soft landing, could be derailed. "We enter this period of uncertainty with high stock and bond prices, even after the recent decline... markets still seem to be pricing assets on the assumption that we will continue to have a fairly soft landing. I am not so sure," Dimon wrote.

Bill Ackman

The harshest attack comes from Bill Ackman, a large hedge fund manager, who in a tweet takes aim at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former CEO and chairman of the financial giant Cantor Fitzgerald: 'I just realised,' Ackman wrote on X, 'why@howardlutnick is indifferent to the stock market and the collapse of the economy. He and Cantor are long on bonds. He makes money when our economy implodes. It's a bad idea to pick a Commerce Secretary whose company has massive investments in fixed income. It is an irreconcilable conflict of interest."

Over the past week, yields on ten-year US Treasuries have actually fallen from 4.355 to 3.95 per cent, giving those who hold US government bonds in their portfolios handsome gains. Cantor Fitzgerald is one of 24 US Treasury primary dealers, the companies authorised to buy bonds directly from the Treasury and then resell them to investors.

The new trade regime is a 'mistake', Ackman stated earlier in another post on X, marking with his stance a clean break from one of the President's main supporters on Wall Street, a support that became explicit after the July assassination attempt during the election campaign.

"By imposing massive and disproportionate tariffs on both our friends and our enemies and thus launching a global economic war against the entire world in one fell swoop, we are destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner," Ackman wrote. "The consequences for our country and the millions of citizens who supported the President - particularly for low-income consumers who are already under tremendous economic stress - will be severely negative. This is not why we voted," the hedge fund manager said.

His company Pershing Square has only one investment - Nike's three-year call options - directly affected by the tariffs, a position that represents 1.5 per cent of the company's portfolio, said Ackman, who said the company will not be a 'seller in a declining market', although it will suffer mark-to-market losses if the market collapses. "We will be buyers of great companies at highly discounted prices that will benefit us and our investors over the long term," the post read.

Ray Dalio

Ackman's position adds to what was recently written by Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund: 'The immediate consequences,' said Dalio, 'will be significantly stagflationary in the US.

Larry Fink

In recent days, on the eve of the start of tariffs, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, had said in his traditional annual letter to shareholders that the US could suffer the backlash of huge debt and uncertainty at the expense of the dollar, 'which could lose its status as a global reserve currency to Bitcoin'.