Can Trump's billionaire backers pull him back from the tariff cliff?
Many of America's billionaires and millionaires thought they knew how they would profit from a second Trump term: There would be tax cuts and deregulation and an end to bothersome government investigations.
In other words, a White House sedulously attuned to their interests.
What they didn't count on, however, was a chaotic and nonsensical tariff policy that threatens to plunge their investment holdings into a bear market — or in some cases, has already done so — and to unravel the global economy in which they made all their money.
Now, many of his erstwhile supporters among America's plutocrats are screaming for mercy. In interviews and social media postings, and in one case even via a federal lawsuit, they've been calling on him to roll back his tariff plans or at least to pause them for several months.
Is he listening? So far, he hasn't indicated a change in strategy. Whether Trump is open to persuasion or his White House sits behind a figurative barrier against criticism, like the Coulomb barrier that repels protons from an atomic nucleus until they reach a high energy level, isn't known.
Criticism of the tariffs by Trump's wealthier supporters has emerged as the investment markets continue to reel over Trump's tariff plans and his apparent resistance to moderating the levies or his anti-free-trade rhetoric.
One can't pretend that Trump's backers haven't been speaking clearly. Let's listen in on the backlash from billionaires and the billionaire-adjacent.
Among the most vociferous is Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot. Langone, whose net worth is estimated at about $9.5 billion by Forbes, is a Trump backer whose political contributions have gone mostly to Republicans, including a $500,000 donation last year to the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Monday, Langone decried Trump's tariffs as too large, imposed too hastily, and based on an incoherent mathematical formula.
Langone told the FT that he thought Trump was 'poorly advised.' He questioned the math used by the White House to calculate the 'reciprocal tariffs' Trump announced on April 2. 'I don't understand the goddamn formula,' he said. 'I believe he's been poorly advised by his advisors about this trade situation — and the formula they're applying.'
Focusing on how the formula produced a 42% tariff on goods from Vietnam, he called that figure 'bulls—. ... Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on! You might as well tell them, 'Don't even bother calling.'' He also called the 34% tariff on China 'too aggressive, too soon.' He spoke before Trump threatened to add another 50% to tariffs on goods from China if it pursued plans to retaliate with higher tariffs on U.S. goods.
Langone is not alone in questioning the April 2 formula. Because of a definitional error, according to economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the formula yielded tariffs that are roughly four times too high. The proper rate for Vietnam, they calculated, should be 12.2%, not 46%.
'The formula the administration relied on has no foundation in either economic theory or trade law,' Corinth and Veuger wrote. 'But if we are going to pretend that it is a sound basis for US trade policy, we should at least be allowed to expect that the relevant White House officials do their calculations carefully.'
Among others weighing in on the tariffs was Stanley Druckenmiller, a revered investment manager who once worked for progressive philanthropist George Soros, and was once the mentor and boss of Scott Bessant, Trump's treasury secretary. In the 2020 election, Druckenmiller contributed $250,000 to the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund.
In an interview Sunday with CNBC that he later cited in a tweet on X, Druckenmiller said tariffs shouldn't exceed 10% to avoid triggering retaliatory tariffs by targeted countries. Trump's tariffs start at 10% and go higher from there.
'What Trump unveiled Wednesday,' tweeted billionaire investment manager Ken Fisher, who has contributed to Republicans and Democrats, 'is stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools. ... On tariffs Trump is beyond the pale by a long shot.'
Fisher called the tariff formula 'ridiculous' and predicted that 'if GOP congress members don't get Trump's tariffs reigned in pretty quickly, the midterms ... will be a blood bath for them big time.'
Among the most vociferous critics of the tariffs has been billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who was one of Trump's most steadfast supporters during the presidential campaign and since the election. But he drew the line at the tariff announcement.
Referring to the plan to begin imposing reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, Ackman tweeted that if '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.'
He added, 'What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war? I don't know of one who will do so.' He urged Trump to 'call a time out.'
Business leaders have also begun speaking out. As I reported earlier, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who earlier this year counseled Americans that Trump's plans for relatively modest tariff increases were no big deal — 'Get over it,' he advised — changed his tune in a his annual letter to JPM shareholders published Monday. There he observed that 'the recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.'
Wilbur Ross, an investment banker who served as Commerce Secretary during Trump's first term, indicated that he was unnerved by the magnitude of the planned tariff hike.
'It's more severe than I would have expected,' he told the Financial Times. 'Particularly the way it is impacting Vietnam, China and Cambodia is more extreme than I would have thought.' He added, 'It's hard to deal with uncertainty. Fear of the unknown is the worst for people and we are in a period of extreme fear of the unknown.'
Trump's tariff policy has exposed a serious rift within his inner circle, with conflict between his advisor Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, Trump's hard-line trade counselor, breaking into the open.
Speaking on CNBC Monday — after Musk called for 'a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone between Europe and North America' — the opposite of Trump's approach — Navarro called Musk 'not a car manufacturer' but a 'car assembler,' referring to Tesla, the electric vehicle maker Musk controls. Navarro's goal was to imply that Tesla is dependent on imported parts that would be subject to the new tariffs.
Musk responded with tweets in which he called Navarro 'truly a moron' and 'dumber than a sack of bricks.' The assertion that Tesla relies on imported parts, he wrote, is 'demonstrably false.'
The Trump White House downplayed the conflict as a minor spat. 'Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
Another path of attack on Trump's tariffs was opened last week by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative legal group that has been funded by right-wing sources including the Koch network, the Linde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
The Alliance filed a lawsuit last week asserting that the law Trump cited as giving him power to set tariffs — a power the constitution reserves for Congress — does not, in fact, provide that authority.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump aides want Texas to redraw its congressional maps to boost the GOP. What would that mean?
This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas' free newsletters here. Republicans representing Texas in Congress are considering this week whether to push their state Legislature to take the unusual step of redrawing district lines to shore up the GOP's advantage in the U.S. House. But the contours of the plan, including whether Gov. Greg Abbott would call a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps, remain largely uncertain. The idea is being driven by President Donald Trump's political advisers, who want to draw up new maps that would give Republicans a better chance to flip seats currently held by Democrats, according to two GOP congressional aides familiar with the matter. That proposal, which would involve shifting GOP voters from safely red districts into neighboring blue ones, is aimed at safeguarding Republicans' thin majority in Congress, where they control the lower chamber, 220-212. The redistricting proposal, and the Trump team's role in pushing it, was first reported by The New York Times Monday. Without a Republican majority in Congress, Trump's legislative agenda would likely stall, and the president could face investigations from newly empowered Democratic committee chairs intent on scrutinizing the White House. Here's what we know about the plan so far: On Capitol Hill, members of the Texas GOP delegation huddled Monday night to discuss the prospect of reshaping their districts. Most of the 25-member group expressed reluctance about the idea, citing concerns about jeopardizing their districts in next year's midterms if the new maps overextended the GOP's advantage, according to the two GOP aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, was skeptical of the idea. 'We just recently worked on the new maps,' Arrington told The Texas Tribune. To reopen the process, he said, 'there'd have to be a significant benefit to our state.' The delegation has yet to be presented with mockups of new maps, two aides said. Each state's political maps must be redrawn once a decade, after each round of the U.S. census, to account for population growth and ensure every congressional and legislative district has roughly the same number of people. Texas lawmakers last overhauled their district lines in 2021. There's no federal law that prohibits states from redrawing district maps midcycle, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's civil rights division. Laws around the timing to redraw congressional and state district maps vary by state. In Texas, the state constitution doesn't specify timing, so the redrawing of maps is left to the discretion of the governor and the Legislature. Lawmakers gaveled out of their 140-day regular session last week, meaning they would need to be called back for a special session to change the state's political maps. Abbott has the sole authority to order overtime sessions and decide what lawmakers are allowed to consider. A trial is underway in El Paso in a long-running challenge to the state legislative and congressional district maps Texas drew after the 2020 U.S. Census. If Texas redraws its congressional maps, state officials would then ask the court to toss the claims challenging those districts 'that no longer exist,' Levitt said. The portion of the case over the state legislative district maps would continue. If the judge agrees, then both parties would have to file new legal claims for the updated maps. It isn't clear how much maps could change, but voters could find themselves in new districts, and Levitt said redrawing the lines in the middle of the redistricting cycle is a bad idea. 'If the people of Texas think that their representatives have done a bad job, then when the [district] lines change, they're not voting on those representatives anymore,' Levitt said. 'New people are voting on those representatives.' The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Democrats' national arm for contesting state GOP mapmaking, said the proposal to expand Republicans' stronghold in Texas was 'yet another example of Trump trying to suppress votes in order to hold onto power.' 'Texas's congressional map is already being sued for violating the Voting Rights Act because it diminishes the voting power of the state's fast-growing Latino population,' John Bisognano, president of the NDRC said. 'To draw an even more extreme gerrymander would only assure that the barrage of legal challenges against Texas will continue.' When Republicans in charge of the Legislature redrew the district lines after the 2020 census, they focused on reinforcing their political support in districts already controlled by the GOP. This redistricting proposal would likely take a different approach. As things stand, Republicans hold 25 of the state's 38 congressional seats. Democrats hold 12 seats and are expected to regain control of Texas' one vacant seat in a special election this fall. Most of Texas' GOP-controlled districts lean heavily Republican: In last year's election, 24 of those 25 seats were carried by a Republican victor who received at least 60% of the vote or ran unopposed. The exception was U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who captured 57% of the vote and won by a comfortable 14-point margin. With little competition to speak of, The Times reported, Trump's political advisers believe at least some of those districts could bear the loss of GOP voters who would be reshuffled into neighboring, Democratic-held districts — giving Republican hopefuls a better chance to flip those seats from blue to red. The party in control of the White House frequently loses seats during midterm cycles, and Trump's team is likely looking to offset potential GOP losses in other states and improve the odds of holding on to a narrow House majority. Incumbent Republicans, though, don't love the idea of sacrificing a comfortable race in a safe district for the possibility of picking up a few seats, according to GOP aides. In 2003, after Texas Republicans initially left it up to the courts to draw new lines following the 2000 census, then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Sugar Land Republican, embarked instead on a bold course of action to consolidate GOP power in the state. He, along with his Republican allies, redrew the lines as the opening salvo to a multistate redistricting plan aimed at accumulating power for his party in states across the country. Enraged by the power play, Democrats fled the state, depriving the Texas House of the quorum it needed to function. The rebels eventually relented under threat of arrest, a rare power in the Texas Constitution used to compel absent members back to return to Austin when the Legislature is in session. The lines were then redrawn, cementing the GOP majority the delegation has enjoyed in Washington for the past two decades. However, what's at play this time is different than in the early 2000s, when Republicans had a newfound majority in the Legislature and had a number of vulnerable Democratic incumbents they could pick off. Now, Republicans have been entrenched in the majority for decades and will have to answer the question of whether there's really more to gain, said Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice's Washington office. 'That's the tradeoff. You can do that too much so that you actually make them so competitive that the other side wins,' Crayton said. 'That's always a danger.' Texas Republicans are planning to reconvene Thursday to continue discussing the plan, according to Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, who said they will attend the meeting. Members of Trump's political team are also expected to attend, according to Hunt and two GOP congressional aides familiar with the matter. Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She's based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@ Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Washington Post
20 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Permitless concealed carry in North Carolina faces uphill battle after some GOP pushback
RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill to let adults carry concealed handguns without a permit cleared the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday, however the path to joining the majority of U.S. states with similar laws remains uncertain. The GOP-backed legislation faces a likely veto from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, as well as pushback from a handful of Republicans who voted against the legislation in the state House. House Speaker Destin Hall acknowledged those concerns after Wednesday's vote.
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meta Platforms (META) Bets Big on AGI With $10 Billion Push and New AI Dream Team
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:) is one of the 10 AI Stocks on Wall Street's Radar. On June 10, Bloomberg News reported that the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is setting up a team of experts to achieve what is known as 'artificial general intelligence' (AGI), or machines that can match or surpass human capabilities. Citing sources, the report has revealed that the new AI team is being set up along with a reported investment of over $10 billion in Scale AI. It further reported how Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is expected to join the group after a deal is done. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is planning to personally recruit around 50 people, including a new head of AI research for the AGI team. The decision is being made after looking at the performance and reception of Meta's latest large language model, Llama 4, the report stated. While we acknowledge the potential of META as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and Disclosure: None.
