Here's what bright minds on Wall Street are saying about Trump's tariff-fueled market meltdown

Jennifer Sor,Theron Mohamed,Huileng Tan

Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 8:25 AM 7 min read

• President Donald Trump's global trade war has sent markets into a frenzy this week.

• Trump's latest and most aggressive tariffs brought chaos to the bond market on Wednesday.

• Investors and CEOs have been weighing in on Trump's levies.

President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs came into effect on Wednesday, as chaos continued to plague global financial markets.

While Trump's latest round of levies has seen wild volatility in the stock market, attention Wednesday turned to bonds, with US Treasury yields spiking and prices falling amid retaliatory measures announced by China and the EU.

Here's what Wall Street's top minds have been saying about tariffs and the economy this week.

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 stock sell-off 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.

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."

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.