Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says Trump needs 90-day ‘time out’ on

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called for a 90-day “time-out” on President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, warning of the United States bringing forth a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter.” 

In a lengthy X post on Sunday, the billionaire founder of Pershing Square hedge fund management argued that the U.S. “is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country,” but stressed that business “is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.” 

Ackman, who backed the Republican presidential candidate in July 2024 after previously supporting the Democratic Party, acknowledged that Trump “has elevated the tariff issue to the most important geopolitical issue in the world, and he has gotten everyone’s attention.” 

“So far, so good. And yes, other nations have taken advantage of the U.S. by protecting their home industries at the expense of millions of our jobs and economic growth in our country,” Ackman wrote. “But, 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.”

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Bill Ackman speaks at The 2024 Pershing Square Foundation Prize Dinner at the Park Avenue Armory on June 17, 2024, in New York City.  (Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Ackman said that Trump “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.” 

If not, Ackman said, the United States on April 9 will “launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world,” and “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 markets in Europe and Asia continued to plunge on Monday after Trump urged Americans to “hang tough” on his reciprocal tariffs plan that sent Wall Street into a frenzy last week. The White House has promised to levy higher customs tariffs on about 60 nations considered the “worst offenders” on Wednesday, April 9. 

In a new Truth Social post on Monday morning, Trump said that “oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION, and the long time abused USA is bringing in Billions of Dollars a week from the abusing countries on Tariffs that are already in place.” 

“This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its Tariffs by 34%, on top of its…