Hedge fund honcho Bill Ackman joined a growing list of President Donald Trump’s billionaire backers calling for the White House to slam the brakes on tariffs just hours before Trump authorized a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for most countries that went into effect Wednesday morning.
Ackman took to social media early Wednesday, asking Trump to put a 90-day pause on tariffs, arguing the president can “accomplish his objectives without destroying small businesses in the short term.”
In a lengthy post on X, Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, issued a dire warning of what could happen if the tariffs weren’t halted immediately.
“If the president doesn’t pause the effect of the tariffs soon, many small businesses will go bankrupt,” Ackman wrote. “Medium-sized businesses will be next.”
Ackman joined other billionaires, including some like him who supported Trump’s campaign for reelection, in turning a cold shoulder to the escalating tariff war. Trump claims the tariffs are necessary for leveling the playing field for the United States importers, saying, “foreign trade and economic practices have created a national emergency.”
NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 17: Bill Ackman speaks at The 2024 Pershing Square Foundation Prize Dinner at the Park Avenue Armory at the Park Avenue Armory on June 17, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image
It was not immediately clear if the pushback from his billionaire supporters prompted Trump to hit pause.
Other billionaire moguls — including investor and philanthropist Stanley Druckenmiller, Citdel owner Kenneth Griffin and even Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a senior adviser to the president — have spoken out against Trump’s tariffs after supporting the president’s re-election campaign.
Speaking at an event in Miami on Monday night, Griffin called Trump’s tariffs a “huge policy mistake,” according to The Wall Street Journal. In a rare social media post on Sunday, Druckenmiller wrote, “I do not support tariffs exceeding 10%.”
Musk has publicly blasted Trump’s senior trade adviser Peter Navarro, one of the architects of Trump’s tariff policy, calling him “truly a moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” after Navarro described him as a “car assembler.” In a live stream speech to Italy’s League Congress Conference in Florence, Italy, on Saturday, Musk expressed hope for the U.S. and Europe to create “a very close, stronger partnership” and reach a “zero-tariff” policy soon.
A 10% tariff on all U.S. trading partners went into effect on Saturday. Additional reciprocal tariffs against more than 60 countries that place duties on U.S. imports went into effect at 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday. But on Wednesday afternoon, Trump was pausing the reciprocal tariffs on most countries about 13 hours after they went into effect and eight days after he announced them in a White House news conference.
The pause would not apply to China, however, because government officials there were unwilling to make a deal, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Trump had already raised tariffs on China to 104% after China refused to back down from imposing a 34% tariff on U.S. goods. On Wednesday, China responded by jacking up tariffs on U.S. products to 84%, prompting Trump to tack on an additional 21%, bringing China’s tariff to 125%.
European Union countries on Wednesday backed the European Commission’s proposal to push back on Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum with a set of countermeasures.
Ackman spoke out against tariffs, saying he is “receiving an increasing number of emails and texts from small business people I do business or have invested in, expressing fear that they will not be able to pass on their increased costs to their customers and will suffer severely negative consequences.”
In his post Wednesday, Ackman shared an email from the founder of a cold brew coffee business he said he received before China’s announced retaliatory tariffs. The cold brew coffee founder said his cost for glass bottles sourced from China will go up 50%, while chai sourced from India will increase by 26% and coffee imported from Ethiopia, Peru and Canada will climb by 10%.
“Will my clients tolerate a near doubling of their contract costs overnight, or will they expect me to absorb the increases my vendors are already threatening?” the business owner wrote in the email to Ackman. “If clients resist price hikes and my employees demand higher wages to offset their rising cost of living, we end up in a lose-lose scenario — no spending and no jobs.”
Ackman ended his post by writing, “May cooler heads prevail.”
Following Trump’s announcement that he was pausing tariffs on most countries, Ackman issued a series of new posts on X, including one saying, “This was brilliantly executed by @realDonald Trump. Texbook, Art of the Deal.”
“The benefit of @realDonaldTrump’s approach is that we now understand who are our preferred trading partners, and who the problems are. China has shown themselves to be a bad actor,” Ackman said in a post. “Our counterparties also have a taste of what life is like if they don’t take down their trade barriers.”
Ackman added, “This is the perfect setup for trade negotiations over the next 90 days” and he offered a piece of advice for China: “Pick up the phone and call the President. He is a tough but fair negotiator. The longer China holds out and retaliates, the worse the outcome for China.”
