Stock Market Crash: What Wall Street’s Bright Minds Say About Tariffs

President Donald Trump’s tariff plan is making stock market history — and Wall Street is reeling.

The president’s latest and most aggressive round of tariffs has fueled the worst market sell-off since 2020, leaving Wall Street on edge as concerns swirl over the economic impact of the tariffs and the growing possibility of a recession in 2025.

Stocks extended their losses on Monday, with all three benchmark indexes diving into the red and the S&P 500 briefly entering a bear market as Trump doubled down on his resolve to lower the trade deficit. Futures were trading higher on Tuesday.

Here’s what Wall Street’s top minds have been saying this week.

Larry Fink: Economy is probably already in recession

The US is likely already mired in a downturn — and stocks could plummet another 20% before they find a bottom, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said.

Fink, who spoke at an event at the Economic Club of New York on Monday, added that he was concerned there were more inflationary pressures on the economy than the market was pricing in.

Still, he said the sell-off in stocks looked like “more of a buying opportunity than a selling opportunity,” adding that he didn’t believe tariffs were creating systemic risks to the economy.

Bill Ackman: Tariffs could spark an ‘economic nuclear war’

Economic chaos is likely if Trump doesn’t pause or scale back tariffs immediately, the billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman said Monday in a post on X.

Ackman, who endorsed Trump during the presidential race, urged the commander in chief to call off the tariffs for 90 days to allow the US and other countries to negotiate over trade policy.

“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 pocketbooks, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” the Pershing Square founder wrote.

In a separate post, Ackman said his firm wouldn’t dump its US stock holdings even if tariff fears sparked a massive price drop.

“We will suffer mark-to-market losses if the market crashes, but we will not be sellers in a declining market,” Ackman said, adding: “Over the long term, we are exposed to the health of our country and its economy. This is my only investment ‘conflict’ if you want to call it that.”

Boaz Weinstein: Brace for an ‘avalanche’ in markets

The stock sell-off could get even worse, said Boaz Weinstein, a famed hedge funder and the founder of Saba Capital Management. That’s because Trump’s trade war could rattle the bond market and spark a wave of bankruptcies, he told Bloomberg TV.

“This is not going to get fixed tomorrow. I believe you cannot put the genie back in the bottle,” Weinstein told the outlet in an interview published on Monday, pointing to reciprocal tariffs from China and other knock-on effects from Trump’s tariff plan.

“The avalanche has really just started,” he added. “The hit could be faster and the bankruptcy rate could spike much faster than other crises.”

Weinstein said he saw a “real possibility” of the US entering a severe recession, pointing to how the Smoot-Hawley tariffs worsened the economic situation leading into the Great Depression.

“There might be something in between that stops the boulder, but I’m very concerned about a crash,” he said.

Jamie Dimon: ‘Tug-of-war’ could be lasting

In his annual letter to shareholders on Monday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned of the impact of tariffs, saying the steep duties on US imports could slow growth and raise inflation.

“The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,” the billionaire banker wrote.

Dimon also mentioned stagflation, a scenario where economic growth stagnates while inflation stays high. Economists say such an outcome, which plagued the US economy in the 1970s, would be even harder for policymakers to deal with than a recession, as inflationary pressures would prevent the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy.

“This tug-of-war can go on for some time, but it’s good to remember that in the stagflation of the 1970s, recessions did not stop the inexorable trend of rising rates,” he added.

Stanley Druckenmiller: ‘Simply a consumption tax’

Stanley Druckenmiller reiterated his stance against tariffs in an X post on Monday.

“I do not support tariffs exceeding 10% which I made abundantly clear in the interview you cite,” the top investor wrote in response to another post, which featured a clip of a previous CNBC interview.

In the interview, Druckenmiller said he saw tariffs within “the 10% range” as the “lesser of two evils,” adding that he believed that duties on US imports were “simply a consumption tax” partly paid for by foreign countries.

Ray Dalio: Tariffs aren’t the real story

Trump’s tariffs are having “very big impacts on markets and economies,” but there should be more focus on what caused them and the even greater disruptions ahead, Ray Dalio said in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

“The far bigger, far more important thing to keep in mind is that we are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political, and geopolitical orders,” he wrote, adding this kind of event only happened about once in a lifetime.

Dalio — the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates and the official mentor to the hedge fund’s three co-chief investors — said unsustainable debt levels, gaping divides between people, and the end of US global dominance are behind the current disorder.

He also pointed to increasingly disruptive acts of nature and technological innovations such as AI as key drivers of the ongoing changes.

Brad Gerstner: ‘Nuclear-style attack on global business

Trump went too far with his tariffs, leaving investors shellshocked and the economy in danger, Brad Gerstner, the founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, told Fox Business on Monday.

Instead of precisely targeting import taxes at a few countries, the US “took out the bazooka,” he said. “These are not reciprocal tariffs — this is a nuclear-style assault on global business and it’s gonna land us in a recession.”

The veteran tech investor said Trump needs to show Wall Street he wants fair tariffs and isn’t “trying to unwind the entire global system of trade which has worked really well for America.”

Gerstner added that “credit markets are beginning to crack, and when that happens, we’re on the verge of throwing the US into a recession that you can’t easily get out of.” The US can’t “just push a button and magically this all resets.”