BlackRock CEO Fink warns 'protectionism' is back in force
LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) - BlackRock (BLK.N), opens new tab chief executive Larry Fink has told investors that "protectionism has returned with force" just days before a fresh round of tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump are set to be unleashed on the global economy.
Fink wrote in his annual letter to shareholders in the world's biggest asset manager that too many people are currently missing out on prosperity in twin-speed economies, where the wealthy build more wealth and others face deeper hardship.
"Capitalism did work — just for too few people," Fink wrote in his letter published on Monday, adding the divide had helped fuel a rise in protectionist policies, whilst not mentioning Trump once in a letter running to some 10,000 words.
Trump has promised to unveil a massive tariff plan on Wednesday, which he has dubbed "Liberation Day." He has already imposed tariffs on aluminum, steel and autos, along with increased tariffs on all goods from China.
Fink said nearly every client, leader and person he spoke to was more anxious about the economy than at "any time in recent memory", but he said markets tended to perform in the long run.
The BlackRock boss' main argument to resolve these problems was to further "democratize" markets, partly by helping a greater number of consumers access potentially higher returns in private markets such as infrastructure and private credit - investment areas into which BlackRock has expanded heavily recently as it tries to diversify its business.
BlackRock, which became the world's biggest money manager thanks mainly to the popularity of low-cost passive index-tracking funds, went on a buying spree last year to add infrastructure specialist Global Infrastructure Partners, private credit provider HPS and private data firm Preqin.
Private assets, unlike publicly-traded stocks and bonds, are typically not listed, are traded less frequently and their pricing can be opaque, raising potential risks for retail investors.
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Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
How stunned Joe Rogan reacted to Trump and Musk war in real time during Kash Patel interview
It was supposed to be just another no-holds-barred conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, but what unfolded in real time stunned even Joe Rogan himself. Midway through the recording of Rogan's high-profile interview with FBI Director Kash Patel on Thursday afternoon, chaos was erupting on social media. Donald Trump and Elon Musk, once the closest of political allies and collaborators, were detonating their relationship in a flurry of public insults, threats, and finally, an explosive accusation that would leave political world gasping. 'Jesus Christ,' Rogan muttered, his eyes widening as he read aloud Musk's now-infamous post: 'Time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!' The podcast had already been knee-deep in a discussion of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein 's shadowy network, when Rogan's producer put up Musk's incendiary post on the screen. It was an accusation aimed squarely at Trump, dragging him into the murky world of Epstein's infamous island and the so-called 'Epstein files' - flight logs and documents long rumored to implicate the powerful and well-connected. 'I'm not participating in any of that conversation between Elon and Trump,' Patel said immediately, distancing himself from the explosive spat. But Rogan couldn't look away. 'Someone should take his phone away,' Rogan muttered, incredulous. 'Jesus Christ that's a crazy thing to say. How does he know? Does he have access to the Epstein files?' Patel remained calm but firmly replied: 'I don't know how he would. But I'm staying out of it. That's way outside my lane.' Still in disbelief Rogan added: 'What the f*** are they doing?' The Musk-Trump row had been simmering for days, but few expected it to erupt so spectacularly. 'I understand he owns Twitter, but I think it's bad for your mental health,' Rogan said moments later. 'Posting all day and arguing with people all day - that can't be good for you.' 'I know my lane and that ain't it,' Patel said again, staying as far from the blast zone as possible. Hours earlier, at a White House meeting, Trump had lashed out at Musk's blistering critique of his prized 'Big Beautiful Bill,' calling the Tesla founder 'very disappointing.' From there, the tit-for-tat escalated with breathtaking speed. Musk upped the ante by threatening to back a third-party challenger, a nightmare scenario for Republican strategists. Trump, never one to back down, retaliated by publicly musing about cancelling Musk's multi-billion-dollar government contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense. By Friday, as word of the Musk-Trump implosion spread, Washington seemed to be in full crisis mode. Senior Republicans scrambled to contain the damage, fearful that the spectacle could derail crucial legislation, including Trump's controversial tax and border spending bill, which Musk had labeled an 'abomination.' 'I hope it doesn't distract us from getting the job done,' Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Washington) told reporters nervously. Others practically begged for a reconciliation. 'When the two of them are working together, we get a lot more done,' Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Fox News. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted a photo collage of Trump and Musk, pleading: 'Who else really wants @elonmusk and @realDonaldTrump to reconcile?' But Trump, in true Trump fashion, showed no interest in extending an olive branch. 'You mean the man who has lost his mind?' he scoffed when asked about Musk during a phone interview with ABC News. 'I'm not particularly interested in talking to him.' Later, aboard Air Force One en route to his Bedminster golf club, Trump struck a more detached tone. 'Honestly, I've been so busy working on China, Russia, Iran... I'm not thinking about Elon Musk. I just wish him well,' he told reporters, even as aides privately fumed that Musk's accusations could inflict serious damage. Still, the president couldn't resist one last jab: 'He's lost it.' The political earthquake was soon matched by a financial one. Tesla's stock plummeted more than 14% on Thursday amid the very public feud, wiping out nearly $100 billion in market value before recovering slightly by Friday. At the White House, aides whispered that Trump was considering getting rid of the bright red Tesla Model S he famously purchased earlier this year, a symbol of the bromance that once was. Musk is seen jumping on stage as he joined Donald Trump during a campaign rally last October 'He's thinking about it, yes,' a senior White House official confirmed. Meanwhile, Musk remained unusually quiet on Friday, steering clear of his usual rapid-fire posting on X, the platform he owns and has aggressively reshaped. For Trump, Musk's financial and political support had been crucial. The billionaire donated nearly $300 million to Trump's 2024 campaign. But Musk, too, has much to lose.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Poll reveals whether Americans stand with Trump or Musk as feud spirals
Republicans far-and-away are on President Donald Trump 's side amid his very public break-up with former DOGE leader Elon Musk. In a Daily Mail poll conducted by JL Partners and released Friday, 59 percent of Republicans sided with the U.S. president, while just 12 percent chose Musk. Another 28 percent said they were unsure. 'Republicans are clear: Donald Trump is their man. As our polling showed before, Trump voters are sticking by the person they backed in November over Elon Musk,' said J.L. Partners pollster James Johnson. During Thursday's dust-up, Musk suggested he had more political staying power than Trump, pointing out the president had just three and a half more years in office. Musk also said he backed Trump being impeached - and replaced by 40-year-old Vice President J.D. Vance. Since April Trump has lost some support with GOP voters, while Musk's has grown - but Trump still has nearly five times as much support. Previous polling found that 70 percent of Republicans backed Trump, while 6 percent selected Musk. Only 10 percent of Democrats voiced support for Trump, while 35 percent picked Musk. Fifty-four percent of Democrats were unsure which MAGA-aligned individual to choose. The fresh poll was conducted Friday with a sample of 1,006 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent. On Thursday Trump and Musk took part in a spectacular public spat, which included cameos by dead serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West. The fallout between Trump and Musk - who were political allies for a little less than a year - started in recent weeks when the billionaire started resisting Republicans' 'big, beautiful bill,' arguing that the spending wiped out DOGE's cost-cutting efforts. Then, on Thursday, when Trump was supposed to be hosting the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office, he was asked about Musk's recent criticism. From there the dam broke. 'Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will any more, I was surprised,' Trump told reporters. The president suggested that Musk was angry - not over the bill ballooning the deficit - but because the Trump administration has pulled back on electric vehicle mandates, which negatively impacted Tesla, and replaced the Musk-approved nominee to lead NASA, which could hinder SpaceX 's government contracts. 'And you know, Elon's upset because we took the EV mandate, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles, and they're having a hard time the electric vehicles and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy,' Trump said. 'I know that disburbed him.' Over the weekend, Trump pulled the nomination of Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Isaacman had worked alongside Musk at SpaceX. 'He recommended somebody that I guess he knew very well, I'm sure he respected him, to run NASA and I didn't think it was appropriate and he happened to be a Democrat, like totally Democrat,' Trump continued. 'We won, we get certain privileges and one of the privileges is we don't have to appoint a Democrat.' Musk posted to X as Trump's Q&A with reporters was ongoing. 'Whatever,' the billionaire wrote. 'Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill,' he advised. 'In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that [is] both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!' Musk continued. 'Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way.' The spat quickly turned personal with Musk then posting that Trump would have lost the 2024 election had it not been for the world's richest man - him. Musk had publicly endorsed Trump on the heels of the July 13th assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania and poured around $290 million of his fortune into the Republican's campaign. The billionaire also joined Trump on the campaign trail when he returned to the site of the Butler shooting in early October, a month before Election Day. Elon Musk objected to President Donald Trump's claim that Trump would have won Pennsylvania - and the 2024 election - without the help from the world's richest man. 'Such ingratitude,' Musk commented Trump said in the Oval that he likely still would have won Pennsylvania without Musk's help and because Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris didn't choose the state's governor, Josh Shapiro, to be her running mate. Even with Shapiro on the ticket, Trump claimed, 'I would have won Pennsylvania, I would have won by a lot.' Musk said that was laughable. 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,' Musk claimed. 'Such ingratitude,' the billionaire added. The 53-year-old Musk also asserted he had more staying power than the 78-year-old president. 'Oh and some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years,' Musk said Thursday afternoon, responding to a post from MAGA agitator Laura Loomer. Loomer said she was reporting from Capitol Hill and that Republican lawmakers were trying to determine if it was better to side with Trump or Musk. After his meeting with Merz, Trump continued to throw punches online. Trump asserted that he had asked Musk to leave his administration and said the billionaire went 'CRAZY!' 'Elon was "wearing thin," I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!' Trump wrote. The president then threatened to pull SpaceX and Tesla's government contracts. 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' Trump wrote. Musk then taunted Trump to act. 'This just gets better and better,' he wrote. 'Go ahead, make my day …' In a follow-up post, Musk said he would 'begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.' The Dragon is how NASA astronauts currently travel to the International Space Station - and how supplies make it there. As the fight continued, Tesla shares plummeted. Anti-semitic rapper Kanye West even got involved. 'Broooos please noooooo. We love you both so much,' West wrote. And Musk threw the Epstein bomb. '@RealDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,' Musk wrote. 'Have a nice day, DJT!' Epstein is a serial child sex offender who died in prison in 2019. Trump pledged to release the files related to Epstein, with Attorney General Pam Bondi releasing some pages in February, but most of that information was already in the public domain. 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out,' Musk added. Trump didn't directly respond to Musk's Epstein charge, instead posting what amounted to a shrug on Truth Social, while also continuing to back the 'big, beautiful bill.' 'I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,' Trump wrote. 'This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.' Later he ignored shouted questions from reporters on Musk's Epstein charge as he hosted the National Fraternal Order of Police executive board in the State Dining Room. Asked for comment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Mail in a statement: 'This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.' 'The President is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again,' Leavitt added. Trump didn't directly respond to Musk's Epstein charge, instead posting what amounted to a shrug on Truth Social, while also continuing to back the 'big, beautiful bill.' 'I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago,' Trump wrote. 'This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.' Later he ignored shouted questions from reporters on Musk's Epstein charge as he hosted the National Fraternal Order of Police executive board in the State Dining Room. A source familiar pointed out to the Daily Mail that 'everyone knows President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Palm Beach Golf Club.' 'The Administration itself released Epstein files with the President's name included. This is not a new surprise Elon is uncovering. Everyone already knew this,' the source continued. The source also mused, 'If Elon truly thought the President was more deeply involved with Epstein, why did he hangout with him for 6 months and say he "loves him as much as a straight man can love a straight man?"' It was less than a week ago that Trump gave Musk a golden key and a DOGE send-off from the Oval Office.
New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
Bruce Springsteen faces the end of America
Photo montage by Gaetan Mariage / Alamy When I met Patti Smith soon after Donald Trump's first victory, she said she'd ended up next to him at various New York dinners over the years, back in the Seventies, when he was pitching Trump Towers. 'We were born in the same year, and I have to look at this person and think: all our hopes and dreams from childhood, going through the Sixties, everything we went through – and that's what came out of our generation. Him.' Smith's sing-song voice was in my head at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool on one of the final nights of Bruce Springsteen's Land of Hope and Dreams tour. Springsteen was born three years after Trump and will also have sat at many New York dinners with him. Those with half an eye on the news would be forgiven for thinking that Bruce has been lobbing disses at the president from the stage between his hits, but his latest show is heavier than that: a conscious recasting of two decades of his more politicised music, with a four-minute incitement to revolution in the middle. Here is a bit of what he says: 'The America I love and have sung to you about for so long, a beacon of hope for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight we ask all of you who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring. In America right now we have to organise at home, at work, peacefully in the street. We thank the British people for their support…' Clearly few in the US are speaking out like this on stage, and Trump has responded by calling Springsteen a 'dried-out prune of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!)' and threatening some kind of mysterious action upon his return. Springsteen, the heartland rocker, was never exactly part of the counter-culture, though he did avoid Vietnam by doing the 'basic Sixties rag', as he put it, and acting crazy in his army induction. Yet he has become a true protest singer in his final act. He wears tweed and a tie these days, partly because he's 75 and partly, you suspect, to convey a moral seriousness. When I last saw him, two years ago, I thought I saw some of Joe Biden's easy energy. Well, Bruce still has his faculties. The feeling is: listen to the old man, he has something to say. Springsteen's late years have been something to behold. At some point in the last decade he stopped dyeing his hair and started to talk in a stylised, reedy, story-book voice. The image of the America he seemed to represent shifted back from Seventies Pittsburgh to Thirties California: the bare-armed steelworker became the Marlboro Man, and in 2019 there was a Cowboy album, Western Skies, with an accompanying film in which he was seen on horseback. His autobiography Born to Run revealed recent battles with depression. And it is depression you see tonight in Liverpool – in the wince, the twisted mouth, the accusing index finger; in his entreaty to Liverpool's fans to 'indulge' his sermon against the American administration, delivered night after night, to scatterings of applause. It is a depression I recognise in older American friends who fear they're going to the grave with everything they knew and loved about their country disappearing. But depression is also the stuff of life, of energy. Springsteen has been particularly angry since the early Noughties, since the second Bush administration, but this is his moment somehow, and his song of greedy bankers – 'Death to My Hometown' – is spat out with new meaning in 2025, an ominous abstraction. The father-to-son speech in 'Long Walk Home' feels different in this politically charged world: 'Your flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone/Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't'). A furious version of 'Rainmaker' ('Sometimes folks need to believe in something so bad, so bad, they'll hire a rainmaker') is dedicated to 'our dear leader'. As much as I admire Springsteen and seem to have followed him around and written about him for years, the Land of Hope and Dreams tour made me realise I hadn't fully known what he was for. When I saw him in Hyde Park in 2023, the first 200 yards of the crowd were given over to media wankers like me, with the paying fans at the back: every single person I had ever met in London was there, mildly pissed up and whirling about with looks of mutual congratulation. Springsteen had become, to the middle classes and above, a global symbol of right-thinking, summed up by his long stint on Broadway at $800 a ticket. His dull podcast with Barack Obama was the American version of The Rest Is Politics with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell: men saying stuff you want them to say, to confirm what you already think about stuff (Obama was in awe of Bruce). Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Politics was easy for Springsteen when politics consisted of external events happening to innocent people, rather than something taking place on the level of psychology, in a movement of masses towards a demagogue. The job he adopted, back in the Seventies, was to set a particular kind of American life in its political and historical context: to tell people who they were, and why they mattered. His appeal as a rock star always lay less in his words than in how sincerely he embodied them: his extraordinary outward energy, his mirroring of his audience, his apparent concern with others over himself. After 9/11, someone apparently rolled down a window and told him, 'We need you now,' so he wrote his song 'The Rising' from the viewpoint of a doomed New York fireman ascending the tower. A recent BBC documentary revealed he'd donated £20,000 to the Northumberland and Durham Miners Support Group during the strikes of 1984 – rather as he donated ten grand to unemployed steelworkers in Pittsburgh the previous year. His self-made success and songs about freedom were the Republican dream, but when Reagan tapped him up for endorsements it was a right of passage for Springsteen as a Democrat rocker to rebuff them (I'm pretty sure they tried to play 'Born in the USA' at Trump rallies too). He is quoted as saying that the working-class American was facing a spiritual crisis, years ago: 'It's like he has nothing left to tie him into society any more. He's isolated from the government. Isolated from his job. Isolated from his family… to the point where nothing makes sense.' Now, Trump has taken Springsteen's people (the Republicans were doing so long before Trump), and the interior life of the working man that Springsteen made it his job to portray has been exploited by someone else. 'For 50 years, I've been an ambassador for this country and let me tell you that the America I was singing about is real,' he says, possessively, on stage. Springsteen, like Jon Bon Jovi, sees his fans as workers. The distances travelled, the money spent, the babysitters paid for: that's what the three-hour gigs are all about. It is part of the psyche of a certain generation of working-class American musician to consider themselves in a contract with the people who buy their records. It is not a particularly British thing – though time and again I am impressed by the commitment required to see these big shows, especially when so many punters are of an age where they would not longer, say, sleep in a tent: £250 a night for a hotel, no taxis to the stadium, a huge Ticketmaster crash that leaves hundreds of fans outside the venue fiddling with their QR codes while Bruce can be heard inside singing the opening lines of 'My Love Will Not Let You Down'. Yet the relationship between a rock star and his fan is not a co-dependency: the fan is having a night out, but the rock star needs the fan to survive. It is hard to underestimate the psychological shift Springsteen might be undergoing, in seeing the working men and women of America moving to a politics that is repellent to him. He has not played on American soil since Trump's re-election and it is likely that this kind of political commentary there will turn the 'Bruuuuuce' into the boo. A Springsteen tribute act in his native New Jersey was recently cancelled (the band offered to play other songs, and the venue said no). Last week, a young American band told me they won't speak out about the administration on stage because they're not all white and they're afraid of getting deported. It is the job of the powerful to do the protesting, and, like Pope Leo, Springsteen's previous good works will mean nothing if he doesn't call out the big nude emperor now. The Maga crowd will still come to see him, of course, and yell the 'woah' in 'Born to Run' just as loud as everyone else does – perhaps because music is bigger than politics, or perhaps because politics is now bigger than Bruce. Though his political speeches in Liverpool (it's UK 'heartland' only this tour: no London gigs) feel slightly out of step with a city that has its own problems, it seems fair enough for Springsteen to be telling the truth about America to a crowd who's enjoyed their romantic visions of the country via his music for 50 years. But their own personal communion is suspended tonight, and the song 'My City of Ruins' has nothing to do with 9/11 any more: 'Come on… rise up…' In the crowd, a very old man is sitting on someone's shoulders. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play Anfield stadium, Liverpool, on 7 June 2025 [See also: Wes Anderson's sense of an ending] Related
